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A New Patient Zero

A New Patient Zero

By Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog

New viruses are becoming part of the human experience more often. Who can forget the rise of HIV around the world in the early 1980's? In the 1987 book, "And the Band Played On," the author identified flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas as "Patient Zero," the person who introduced HIV into the US. However, a recent genetic analysis reveals that this was wrong.

In June of 1981, the Centers for Disease Control published a report of five previously healthy gay young men in Los Angeles with a rare lung infection with Pneumocystis carnii or PCP. This infection is indicative of a weakened immune system. Little did we know that this was the start of the US AIDS epidemic. In addition, doctors also reported cases of a rare, aggressive form of skin cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma in some gay men. On June 8th, the CDC began to look for risk factors and to create case definitions for this new disease. By the end of 1981, 270 gay men were diagnosed with severe immune deficiency and 121 of them had died. On September 24, 1982, the CDC coined the term AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

In the 1987 book, the original carrier of HIV who brought AIDS into the US was named as Gaëtan Dugas, a Canadian flight attendant. Mr. Gugas died of Kaposi's sarcoma in 1984 at age 31. It was claimed that he was Patient Zero who spread HIV to the gay bath houses in San Francisco and Los Angeles, sparking the AIDS epidemic. Evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey at the University of Arizona has compiled evidence proving that Dugas was not Patient Zero. After the AIDS virus was identified, scientists tested for HIV in stored blood samples taken from gay and bisexual men in the late 1970's in San Francisco and New York. Worobey determined the sequences of the genomes of those HIV viruses.

When HIV replicates its genome, errors are made producing mutations. Using these sequences, it was determined how these HIV's are related. Results indicated that the epidemic most likely started in New York City around 1970. The US HIV resembles older HIV isolates from Caribbean countries and that HIV reached San Francisco in 1975. Although Dugas did visit Haiti in 1977, he does not appear to be the key person in starting the US epidemic. In fact, the virus he carried fell in the middle of the family tree, not at the beginning.

So Dugas was wrongly vilified in the book, "And The Band Played On" and in the press. Two of his doctors are quoted accusing Dugas of being a "sociopath" for his large number of sexual partners.. However, it was not until 1983 that there was consensus that AIDS was transmitted sexually and in contaminated blood. So Dugas was not aware he was passing on AIDS as the result of his sexual activity until the year before his death. Now we also know that he is unlikely to have been the man who brought HIV to the US. Unfortunately, his lifestyle likely led to him infect many partners contributing to the scale of the epidemic.

Medical Discovery News is hosted by professors Norbert Herzog at Quinnipiac University, and David Niesel of the University of Texas Medical Branch. Learn more at www.medicaldiscoverynews.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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When It Comes to Declawing, Reality Bites
New York could have become a more humane state for cats had two bills to ban declawing passed. The bills, introduced in New York's Assembly and Senate, sought to prohibit declawing unless medically necessary to treat injured or diseased paws. It would have made New York the first state to ban this veterinary surgery.

Sadly, veterinary lobbyists blocked the measure in June, ensuring that both bills failed to advance prior to New York legislature's summer adjournment.

Move over New York. New Jersey now hopes to become the first state to ban declawing.

But here's the reality. Declawing involves ten amputations - 20 if the back claws are included. The surgeon guillotines the last bone of each toe and severs each paw's tendons, nerves, and ligaments.

The mutilation has serious side-effects, including possible hemorrhaging, paw pad lacerations, swelling, radial nerve damage, lameness, infections, the reopening of wounds, chronic pain, and biting and urinating outside the litter box. Yet, many veterinarians bite their tongues when it comes to declawing's dangers.

Thankfully not all. "Declawing fits the dictionary definition of mutilation to a tee. Words such as deform, disfigure, disjoint, and dismember all apply to this surgery," says Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Behaviorists, and founder of the Animal Behavior Clinic at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine.

He's not alone. Declawing is verboten in nearly 30 countries and eight California cities. It's also opposed by several American veterinary colleges and scores of U.S. veterinarians and animal protection groups.

One group, The Paw Project, founded by veterinarian Jennifer Conrad, educates the public about the painful, crippling effects of declawing and actively works to abolish it. The organization championed the New York anti-declawing bills, along with forty-four other organizations and 133 state veterinarians.

The bills' opposition came from surprising sources. The New York State Veterinary Medical Society and New York State Association of Veterinary Technicians fought hard against the bills, claiming declawing keeps cats out of shelters. But the facts don't support it. Biting and litter box avoidance--often the results of declawing--are the top reasons cats are surrendered, not claws.

Conrad has her own theory why some veterinary organizations oppose a ban. Declawing is lucrative. Clients can pay up to $900 to declaw both paws. Clinics often include declawing in a packaged deal with spaying/neutering, thus catapulting the price.

But the fight is not over yet. On June 16th, New Jersey Assemblyman Troy Singleton introduced a bill that would add declawing to his state's criminal animal cruelty offenses.

Under Singleton's bill, New Jersey individuals who perform declawing and people who seek it out will face fines up to $1,000 or spend six months in jail. Violators will also face $500 to $2,000 in civil penalties. An identical bill was introduced in the New Jersey senate. Both bills have been referred to their appropriate committees and we anticipate both committees will hold hearings about them in the fall.

Education is key, says the American Association of Feline Practitioners. Scratching is a natural behavior that communicates joy, excitement, or stress. It's also how cats exercise and play. Dozens of alternatives to declawing exist, including nail trimming, scratching posts, claw caps and deterrents. Veterinarians need to discuss humane alternatives with their clients.

Let's hope New Jersey succeeds in making history as the first state to ban declawing. Otherwise, for New Jersey cats, reality's bite could continue to be quite painful.

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science

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More About Unibrows

By Drs. David Niesel and Norbert Herzog

My mother used to say that I was going to give her grey hair, but what actually caused it was a reduction in the amount of a pigment called melanin. Scientists have now identified 18 genes that are associated with features and characteristics of hair including turning greying, thin eyebrows or a unibrow or why some men need to shave by early afternoon and why others cannot grow a beard at all. Hair is thought to serve many purposes including camouflage, thermal regulation, sensation and in social cues. Approximately 83 billion dollars is spent annually on hair care products globally, not to mention haircuts, wigs and other hair associated expenses, so obviously it is something we humans value.

Humans have lost the vast majority of their body hair but we have retained a substantial amount on our heads and it comes in a vast variety of colors, textures and types even before we start fooling with it. Natural hair color is an inherited trait. Variations in hair can be restricted by geography, for example, different hair colors are essentially restricted to Western Asia and Europe. Straight hair is all but absent in sub-Saharan Africa. Genes have been identified for baldness, hair colors and curliness. Two different genes have been found associated with straight hair, one in Europeans and another in East Asians suggesting that this trait arose independently at least two times.

The latest study involved a genome wide association study or GWAS in people of mixed European, Native American and African ancestry to identify genes associated with variations in hair. GWAS is a rapid method to scan genomes for genetic variations that are associated with diseases or other traits.
Natural hair color is determined by the amount of dark brown eumelanin and reddish pheomelanin. If a person makes a great deal of eumelanin, their hair will be black while a person with little will be blonde. Shades of red hair depend on the amount of pheomelanin compared to eumelanin. Genes for hair color include MC1R which determines how much pheomelanin is made. Now for the first time a gene for the graying of hair has been identified, IRF4, which turns on the TYR gene resulting in melanin production. One type of TYR gene leads to reduced melanin levels and lighter hair or the graying of hair. Stem cells in hair follicles renew the melanocytes that make melanin. These same proteins also appear to maintain melanocyte stem cells offering two possible mechanisms for going gray.

A gene called EDAR regulates the developmental location, size shape and density of hair follicles, particularly for beards. All told, 18 new genes associated with various features of hair were discovered. Most interventions to correct or change hair appearance rely on products that act on hair outside of the hair follicle. A furthering of our understanding of how and where hair grows could lead to the development of products that act on the hair as it grows. Could we block the graying of hair, change the shape, type and location of hair? Who knows, maybe we both could regain the hair we have lost over the years.

Medical Discovery News is hosted by professors Norbert Herzog at Quinnipiac University, and David Niesel of the University of Texas Medical Branch. Learn more at www.medicaldiscoverynews.com.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

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'Nature Is A Giant Broadcasting Station Through Which God Speaks To Us Every Hour'
The reassuring words of George Washington Carver came soothingly to me this morning as I greeted the first day following the formal determination of the Republican Party's candidate for president of the United States. My nerves were rattled and knowing that many of my friends on social media would be feeling as I did, I walked up on deck and took a picture of the rising Sun and posted it to Facebook.

Posting a picture of the sunrise over the river where I live is part of my daily ritual and my reminder to take nothing for granted. This morning I also needed to reassure myself that the Earth is still in its right orbit relative to the sun, despite the cataclysmic shock.

Whenever I'm disturbed, messages from 179 national parks I've visited come flooding into my thoughts and feelings and calm me down:

"I like to think of nature as a giant broadcasting station through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only listen," George Washington Carver whispered as I walked through his "Secret Garden" at his birthplace National Monument in Missouri a few weeks ago. "Our creator is the same and never changes despite the names given Him by people here and in all parts of the world. Even if we gave Him no name at all, He would still be there, within us, waiting to give us good on this earth."

I delighted in the images of Dr. George Washington Carver on the trail through the woods at GWC National Monument in Diamond, MO

Oh Dr. Carver! I'll take your word for it! Because how else might a man born into enslavement, an orphan, black as berry juice, with a lisp and a high falsetto voice come to save American agriculture? How else could you become a world renowned scientist, educator and mentor? A member of the British Royal Society of Arts?

"All my life I have risen regularly at four o'clock and have gone into the woods and talked with God," Dr. Carver said.

That experience reinforces my belief that humans have access to supernatural power if we will invest the time, energy and effort to connect with it. As I've tried to practice spending more time in nature and contemplation each day since, I'm grateful for my husband Frank who reminds me that Dr. Carver didn't have all the distractions I have today -- 24-hour TV news, movies and social media that are my default activities. So even if I don't increase by leaps and bound, I'll just keep working toward that goal.

Another happy-making thought came to mind from my visit to Rocky Mountains National Park last month. Visiting the alpine area where plants stay low to the ground to protect themselves from the cold and the wind almost 12,000 feet up the snowcapped mountains, I mentioned to a ranger that his Deputy Superintendent reminded me of my new crush, actor Gerard Butler that I recently discovered in the movie "London has fallen."

"2016-07-22-1469208517-7808383-Gerardbutler.jpg"

Gerard Butler has become one of my new favorite actors and definitely one of the people I'd most like to meet on a trail in a national park.

"Wow! Gerard Butler was here hiking with me a couple weeks ago," the ranger beamed in response.

I like him even more now that I know he loves our parks.

Our national parks are the repository of our cultural and historic legacy and spectacular natural beauty. From Gerard Butler to Greening Youth Foundation's science interns working in parks, people are drawn to the recreation and inspiration they provide. From George Washington Carver National Monument to Mount Denali in Alaska or Fort Jefferson at the mouth of the Florida Straits, they contain incredible stories of the strivings and heroism of our ancestors.

Angelou Ezelio, (3rd from right) is a member of the Next100 Coalition and with her husband James (2nd from left) founded Greening Youth in Atlanta, training interns in science and land management for employment in public lands around the country.

But large swaths of the American public are still clueless about their existence. That's why Frank and I are part of the Next100 Coalition asking President Obama to continue his legacy of adding parks that represent a diverse cross section of ethnicities, landscapes and stories. A Presidential Memo issued on the National Park Service Centennial Anniversary August 25, would outline a vision that is inclusive of all demographic groups. (The President has added units that honor the contributions of women and the LGBT community since the Center for American Progress cited that less than 20% of our 412 units represent diverse groups.)

Senators Cory Booker, Michael Bennet and 25 others have signed on to our letter, and multiple leaders in the House including Raul Grijalva and Alcee Hastings have called upon the public lands agencies to engage diverse Americans as a greater percentage of their users and workforce.

Some of Dr. Carver's myriad inspirational insights are on display in the Visitor Center at the monument.
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So today I will not indulge feelings of depression or instability. Instead I am channeling my experience at the Carver Monument to pay attention to nature, that "giant broadcasting system" and learning the lessons it has to teach me. I'm staying open to be used for good as Dr. Carver allowed himself to be used. Join me in exploring our parks, learning our stories and drawing inspiration from them to help our country achieve our ideal, "with liberty and justice for all."

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Endangered Species-the ONLY Dragonfly on List: Hine's Emerald

Stan in FL posted a photo:

This is the only dragonfly on the USA Federally Endangered Species list. Once thought to be extinct, the Hine's Emerald was rediscovered at the Mink River Estuary, Wisconsin in 1987. Today, Door County, Wisconsin harbors the largest population of this dragonfly in the world. Now the Hine's Emerald is found in very small populations in only 3 other states, IL., MI., MO. It is unlawful to kill, harass, or possess specimens. The Mink River Estuary is a Great Lakes coastal wetland fed by ground and surface waters as well as by Lake Michigan. This estuary, where the waters of Mink River and Lake Michigan meet, is considered one of the few high quality, freshwater estuaries remaining in North America. The preserve protects almost the entire shoreline of Mink River and much of the river's surface watershed, helping safeguard water quality and wildlife habitat. The Hine's Emerald lives in calcareous (high in calcium carbonate) spring fed marshes and sedge meadows overlaying dolomite bedrock.
They spend up to five years as larvae, surviving in small wetland streams fed by groundwater. The adult will live only 3-5 weeks. The best month to see the Hine's Emerald is July and early August at the Ridges Sanctuary in Door County, WI. This is where I saw several. Seeing this dragonfly was the highlight of a 4500 mile road trip.
Somatochlora hineana

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An Open Letter To President Obama -- Domestic Catastrophic Risk Demands Action Behind The Talk
Dear President Obama:

As Senators, you and Joe Biden were leaders in highlighting the threat of America's hazardous chemical plants -- and in calling for solutions that included moving these facilities to inherently safer technologies. In 2006, you bluntly stated "these plants are stationary weapons of mass destruction spread all across the country."

Unfortunately, three years after the West, Texas, ammonium nitrate explosion, after you spoke at a memorial service for the 15 deceased individuals, and after you issued an executive order demanding action, your EPA has released a proposed rule that does too little to require a shift to safer technologies.

That is outrageous, given the risk of more catastrophes by negligent accident, natural disaster, sabotage, or terrorism. Since the West, Texas tragedy, which federal investigators recently determined was deliberately set, there have been more than 430 chemical incidents and 82 deaths. The EPA has identified 466 U.S. chemical facilities that each put 100,000 or more people at risk.

In 2005, the Homeland Security Council estimated that a major attack on just one of these chemical facilities would kill 17,500 people and injure tens of thousands more. Many of the first victims would be plant workers and people in the low-income communities that often are located near these dangerous plants.

Numerous experts are urging the EPA to issue a rule that focuses on safer technologies, often called materials substitution. They include your former EPA head Lisa Jackson; President Bush's EPA head, Governor Christine Todd Whitman; retired generals like Russel Honoré and Randy Manner; the U.S. Chemical Safety Board; and a broad coalition of environmental, community, and labor groups.

You know who the opposition is: avaricious corporate interests like the Koch brothers. They don't want to pay to shift to safer materials and technologies, even though other companies like Clorox, which eliminated the use of chlorine gas in favor of a safer process for making bleach, have already made the switch and are thriving.

How would our country view a weak EPA rule if one day there was a chemical catastrophe that killed thousands of Americans? More than twenty thousand people died as the result of the 1984 gas leak at a plant in Bhopal, India, in addition to many serious disabling illnesses. A U.S. company, Union Carbide, owned the plant.

If the plant was in the United States, and 20,000 Americans died, would not our country already have responded to this problem? We can't wait for such a tragedy to explode before we take action.

Communities where the most dangerous plants are located -- from Newark to Detroit, Mississippi to California -- cannot wait any longer. For the facilities that have converted, the result is reliable protection for employees and communities against catastrophic disasters, and at low cost. Wherever this can be done, it should be a requirement.

The proposed EPA rule does take an important first step by mandating that certain high-risk chemical plants conduct a safer technology and alternatives analysis (STAA) and feasibility assessment on the use of inherently safer technologies. Perhaps that is one reason why Republican congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas, in whose district Koch Industries is located and who has taken extensive campaign contributions from company officials, is pushing legislation to prohibit the EPA from issuing any rule at all.

But the Administration should not simply resist this industry-backed amendment; it should dramatically improve the rule by:

Requiring all so-called "Risk Management Plan facilities" -- those that use extremely hazardous substances and thus are required to develop a Risk Management Plan (RMP) -- to assess safer alternatives to existing chemical processes. The inadequate proposed EPA rule exempts 87 percent of the some 12,500 Risk Management Plan chemical facilities from requirements to conduct a safer technology and alternatives analysis. The exempted facilities include, for example, water treatment plants, some of which put major cities at risk of a catastrophic release of chlorine gas.
Require all these especially hazardous RMP facilities to send their safer alternatives analyses (STAA) to the EPA and readily share the information with nearby communities and other interested parties, such as emergency responders, vendors of safer technologies, facility employees and contractors, and safety researchers.
Establish a publicly accessible clearinghouse of safer available alternatives that could encourage and support the adoption of safer alternatives by more facilities as soon as practicable.
Starting with the highest risk facilities, require chemical facilities to actually substitute safer alternatives to their industrial processes, wherever feasible, that will eliminate or significantly reduce the consequences of a catastrophic release. The coalition of community, worker and environmental groups that has engaged the EPA on these issues has recommended that EPA at the very least begin a pilot program to require inherently safer technologies to be implemented in a subset of RMP facility categories, such as waste water and drinking water treatment plants, bleach plants and hydrogen fluoride refineries, and for those facilities among the 2,000 high-risk facilities cited in the EPA's National Enforcement Initiative proposal.
The people must demand your EPA issue a stronger rule that moves industry to proven safer technologies and protects the public in every endangered community.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph Nader

P.S. For a map of RMP facilities across the country, concerned citizens may visit this website.

Citizens interested in contacting the EPA may do so by calling (202) 272-0167 or writing to:

Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20460

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astronomy

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NASA's Kepler Mission Reveals a Strange Giant Planet --"A Molten Landscape of a Lava World, an Alien Hell"

Few nighttime sights offer more drama than the full Moon rising over the horizon. Now imagine that instead of the Moon, a gas giant planet spanning three times more sky loomed over the molten landscape of a lava world. This alien hell exists in the two-planet system that includes rocky Kepler-36b, discovered in 2012 that has a turbulent orbital relationship with its neighboring world, 36c. Every 97 days that planet, a “hot Neptune” gas giant comes perilously close to 36b, roughly five times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

"These two worlds are having close encounters," said Josh Carter, a Hubble Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Harvard-Smithsonian artist David Aguilar imagined the glorious spectacle shown above, with the purple gas giant "hot Neptune 36C looming some 2.5 times larger in the sky than our own moon. These picturesque planetary fly-bys that occur every 97 days on average that would trigger tremendous gravitational tides that would squeeze and stretch both planets, triggering even more volcanic activity on 36b, a planet already defined by its lava flows and 1300-degree Fahrenheit temperatures. (The image above shows what 36c might look like from 36b).

"They are the closest to each other of any planetary system we've found," added co-author Eric Agol of the University of Washington.

They spotted the planets in data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which can detect a planet when it passes in front of, and briefly reduces the light coming from, its parent star.

The newfound system contains two planets circling a subgiant star much like the Sun except several billion years older. The inner world, Kepler-36b, is a rocky planet 1.5 times the size of Earth and weighing 4.5 times as much. It orbits about every 14 days at an average distance of less than 11 million miles.

The outer world, Kepler-36c, is a gaseous planet 3.7 times the size of Earth and weighing 8 times as much. This "hot Neptune" orbits once each 16 days at a distance of 12 million miles.

The two planets experience a conjunction every 97 days on average. At that time, they are separated by less than 5 Earth-Moon distances. Since Kepler-36c is much larger than the Moon, it presents a spectacular view in its neighbor's sky. (Coincidentally, the smaller Kepler-36b would appear about the size of the Moon when viewed from Kepler-36c.) Such close approaches stir up tremendous gravitational tides that squeeze and stretch both planets.

Researchers are struggling to understand how these two very different worlds ended up in such close orbits. Within our solar system, rocky planets reside close to the Sun while the gas giants remain distant.

Although Kepler-36 is the first planetary system found to experience such close encounters, it undoubtedly won't be the last.

"We're wondering how many more like this are out there," said Agol.

"We found this one on a first quick look," added Carter. "We're now combing through the Kepler data to try to locate more."

This result was made possible with asteroseismology. Asteroseismology is the study of stars by observing their natural oscillations. Sunlike stars resonate like musical instruments, due to sound waves trapped in their interiors. And just like a musical instrument, the larger the star, the "deeper" are its resonances. This trapped sound makes the stars gently breathe in and out, or oscillate.

Co-author Bill Chaplin (University of Birmingham, UK) noted, "Kepler-36 shows beautiful oscillations. By measuring the oscillations we were able to measure the size, mass and age of the star to exquisite precision."

He added, "Without asteroseismology, it would not have been possible to place such tight constraints on the properties of the planets."

Today's Most Popular

The Daily Galaxy via CfA and University of Washington

NASA's Pleiades Searching Kepler Mission Database for Habitable Alien Moons

Habitable Alien Planets of Binary Stars --"They May Be Hidden Behind Gas Giants"

"Water Worlds of Endless Oceans" --NASA's Kepler Mission Reveals Planets Unlike Anything in Our Solar System (Today's Most Popular)

China Could Legally Seize Moon's 'Peaks of Eternal Light' --"Will Earth's 1st Space War Start There?"

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Hubble Celebrates "Star Trek Beyond" --Releases Epic Final Frontiers Photo

When "Star Trek" was first broadcast in 1966, the largest telescopes on Earth could only see about halfway across the universe -- the rest was uncharted territory. But Hubble's powerful vision has carried us into the true "final frontier." Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, "Star Trek" has captured the public's imagination with the signature phrase, "To boldly go where no one has gone before." NASA's Hubble Space Telescope doesn't "boldly go" deep into space, but it is "boldly peering" deeper into the universe than ever before to explore the warping of space and time and uncover some of the farthest objects ever seen.

This is epitomized in the latest Hubble image released today in time for the new motion picture "Star Trek Beyond." The Hubble image unveils a very cluttered-looking universe filled with galaxies near and far. Some are distorted like a funhouse mirror through a warping-of-space phenomenon first predicted by Einstein a century ago.

In the center of the image is the immense galaxy cluster Abell S1063, located 4 billion light-years away, and surrounded by magnified images of galaxies much farther.

Thanks to Hubble's exquisite sharpness, the photo unveils the effect of space warping due to gravity. The huge mass of the cluster distorts and magnifies the light from galaxies that lie far behind it due to an effect called gravitational lensing. This phenomenon allows Hubble to see galaxies that would otherwise be too small and faint to observe. This "warp field" makes it possible to get a peek at the very first generation of galaxies. Already, an infant galaxy has been found in the field, as it looked 1 billion years after the big bang.

This frontier image provides a sneak peak of the early universe, and gives us a taste of what the James Webb Space Telescope will be capable of seeing in greater detail when it launches in 2018.

The cluster contains approximately 100 million-million solar masses, and contains 51 confirmed galaxies and perhaps over 400 more.

The Frontier Fields program is an ambitious three-year effort, begun in 2013, that teams Hubble with NASA's other Great Observatories -- the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- to probe the early universe by studying large galaxy clusters. Identifying the magnified images of background galaxies within these clusters will help astronomers to improve their models of the distribution of both ordinary and dark matter in the galaxy cluster. This is key to understanding the mysterious nature of dark matter that comprises most of the mass of the universe.

The Daily Galaxy via NASA/Hubble Space Telescope

"The Galaxy at the Beginning of the Universe" --Only 670 Million Years After Big Bang

Image of the Day: An Exploding Light Show in a Milky Way Satellite Galaxy

Hubble Unveils Universe 1.0 -Was it Destroyed by Dark Matter? (Video-A Galaxy Classic)

NASA/Hubble: Dark Vortex Observed in Atmosphere of Neptune

astronomy

..suck.. by Warayut Pachsri

Sleeping Beauty by Eugen Xan

Mountains form the figure of the "Sleeping Beauty" - Color Version

WALL by Dennis Zemtsov

Border collie walking by Ksenia Raykova