15 years ago today the world lost a very talented musician and artist, my wife’s little brother Cayayo Troconis.
He was one of the first punk rockers in Venezuela, his band was called Sentimiento Muerto (Dead Feeling).

I will never forget his expression when he opened the front door of their house in Caracas to find me on a litter surrounded by members of the Guardia Nacional holding machine guns. (they’d just spent 3.5 hrs carrying me down a mountain with a broken ankle)
None of the many photos of Cayayo I found online come close to that look though a few of the B&W ones match the coloring in his face at that moment.
  
Today he is still widely remembered and has become almost a cult figure in South American rock and roll. A biography of him was recently published

http://www.el-nacional.com/escenas/intencion-desmitificar-Cayayo_0_494350639.html

and in 2011 a celebration of his music, with different bands playing his songs, was held:

He’d blush but I know he’d love this:

May he never be forgotten.

But is the gut microbiome in autistic individuals responsible for the disorder? To find out, Caltech postdoctoral researcher Elaine Hsiao engineered mice based on earlier studies showing that women who get the flu during pregnancy double their risk of giving birth to an autistic child. In the mouse model, pregnant females injected with a mock virus gave birth to pups with autism-like symptoms, such as obsessive grooming, anxiety and aloofness.

The mouse pups went on to develop so-called “leaky gut,” in which molecules produced by the gut bacteria trickle into the bloodstream, possibly reaching the brain—a condition also seen in autistic children.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141114-autism-gut-brain-probiotic-research-biology-medicine-bacteria/#at_pco=tcb-1.0&at_si=546a30ea09384dac&at_ab=per-2&at_pos=2&at_tot=4

This 8 minute time-lapse of the largest sunspot seen on the sun in 22 years was filmed over a 16 day period. I suggest watching it on full screen with the volume up.

Tools and primates: Opportunity, not necessity, is the mother of invention

A chimpanzee uses a stone to crack a nut.

When food is scarce, tool use among non-human primates does not increase. This counterintuitive finding leads researchers to suggest that the driving force behind tool use is ecological opportunity — and that the environment shapes the development of culture.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141111205906.htm

KASHIHARA, Nara Prefecture–A glass dish unearthed from a burial mound here is the first of its kind confirmed to have come to Japan from the Roman Empire, a research team said.

A second glass object from the same tomb was made in Persia.

Abe and his colleagues also revealed that the chemical composition of the cut glass bowl is the same as that of glass fragments unearthed from the remains of a palace in the ancient Persian capital of Ctesiphon. The bowl is 8 cm in diameter, 7 cm tall and narrower in the upper part.

“Japan aggressively traded with other countries in the fifth century, and (the latest findings) show various elements were entering Japan at the time,” said Takashi Taniichi, a Silk Road archaeology professor at Sanyo Gakuen University. “Because the glass dish may have been transported via Central Asia, it is no wonder that there was a time lag (between its production and arrival in Japan).”

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1174_19-changes-to-internet-if-all-prejudices-were-reversed/

Before being driven away from Fascbook I was following and posting there about the ongoing excavation at Amphipolis of a massive tomb.
Here’s the latest images and a link to the Greek Reporter story below them:

A man of medium height, white skin, and brown or red hair: This is how the infamous and long awaited “resident” of the Amphipolis Tomb looked like, according to the scientists’ estimations, based on the facts regarding the Greeks of his time (4th century BC).

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2014/11/15/the-resident-of-the-amphipolis-tomb/

Got a few grand burning a hole in your pocket?

The first record Elvis Presley ever made will go on auction next year, along with his first driver’s license.

They are among 68 Presley collectibles going under the hammer at the second “Auction at Graceland” in Memphis, Tennessee.  The sale takes place on January 8, 2015, the day the Elvis would have turned 80.

The “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” died faked his death in 1977, at the age of 42. Presley was 18 in June, 1953 when he paid four dollars at Sun Studios to record the 1940s chestnut “My Happiness” on a 78 rpm acetate disc as a gift for his mother. Since his family didn’t have a record player, Presley took the disc to a friend, Ed Leek, who did. He left it there, and in the end his mother never got the present. “In private hands since it was created, Elvis’ first recording is being offered for the first time since Elvis walked into that Memphis studio over 60 years ago,” the estate said.

Also up for bidding is Presley’s first Tennessee driver’s license, said the estate, which gets its auction items from third-party collectors and ensures they are authentic.
Issued in March 1952 when he was 17, the document identifies Presley as a brown-haired, blue-eyed student residing at a Memphis public housing estate where his family then lived.

The Tulip Nebula 
Image Credit & Description:  J-P Metsävainio (Astro Anarchy)

Framing a bright emission region this telescopic view looks out along the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy toward the nebula rich constellation Cygnus the Swan. Popularly called the Tulip Nebula the glowing cloud of interstellar gas and dust is also found in the 1959 catalog by astronomer Stewart Sharpless as Sh2-101. About 8,000 light-years distant and 70 light-years across the complex and beautiful nebula blossoms at the center of this composite image. Red, green, and blue hues map emissionfrom ionized sulfur, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. Ultraviolet radiation from young, energetic stars at the edge of the Cygnus OB3 association, including O star HDE 227018, ionizes the atoms and powers the emission from the Tulip Nebula. HDE 227018 is the bright star very near the blue arc at the cosmic tulip’s center. Glowing across the electromagnetic spectrum, microquasar Cygnus X-1 and a curved shock front created by its powerful jets lie toward the top and right.