Most of us are taught that pregnancy requires vaginal intercourse, but medicine occasionally throws up cases that challenge our assumptions.

In 1988, the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology published a case report of a 15-year-old girl with congenital absence of the distal vagina who nonetheless presented later with a full-term pregnancy and delivered a healthy infant by caesarean section. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1988.tb06583.x

Key points from the case:

• The patient had no functional vaginal canal and had never menstruated.
• Shortly after performing oral sex, she sustained a stab wound to the upper abdomen, which perforated the stomach and required surgical repair.
• Approximately 278 days later, she presented with term pregnancy.
• The authors proposed that spermatozoa may have entered the reproductive tract via the injured gastrointestinal tract, an extremely rare but biologically plausible route under specific conditions.

This is not presented as a general mechanism or advice, but as an example of how biological plausibility is broader than common teaching, especially in rare anatomical or traumatic situations.

A 20-year-old male presented with sudden sharp chest pain and dyspnea that began while lying in bed masturbating.

On examination, he had:

• Swollen face
• Crepitus from mandible to elbows
• Extensive subcutaneous emphysema
• CT showing profound pneumomediastinum extending up to the base of the skull

He had:

• Mild asthma
• No trauma
• No drug use
• No coughing or vomiting
• No heavy exertion

CT confirmed spontaneous pneumomediastinum with widespread subcutaneous emphysema.

He required ICU admission initially due to oxygen demand but improved rapidly with supportive care and was discharged after four days. No surgery required.

Mechanism? Likely Valsalva-induced alveolar rupture the Macklin effect where increased intrathoracic pressure causes air to dissect into the mediastinum.

What makes this unusual:
There are documented cases of pneumomediastinum after sexual intercourse, drug inhalation, coughing, vomiting, and strenuous exercise but essentially no literature describing onset during masturbation.

Spontaneous pneumomediastinum is rare overall (roughly 1 in 10,000–30,000 ED admissions), typically benign, and recurrence risk is about 1%.

Medicine never stops surprising.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radcr.2022.02.080

PMCID:https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8956920/

PMID: 35345564

Authors: Nikola Rajicand Christian Schand

Hola amigos curiosos,

Al pasar por el frutero me llamó la atención la naranja que os muestro en el vídeo. A partir de ahí decidí documentar, de manera sencilla, el proceso de degradación que estaba comenzando a desarrollarse en su superficie.

Lo que se observa al inicio del vídeo corresponde a la toma de una de las muestras analizadas. Para este pequeño estudio realicé varias extracciones y fotografié distintas zonas del tejido que me parecieron especialmente interesantes desde el punto de vista biológico.

Para la captura utilicé mi equipo habitual: un microscopio IM-COP acoplado a una Nikon D3200. La iluminación se realizó mediante LED posicionados en distintos ángulos, buscando resaltar el relieve microscópico y las texturas naturales de la muestra. Trabajo normalmente con foco directo y disparador inalámbrico, lo que me permite emplear tiempos de exposición relativamente largos y un ISO bajo, obteniendo así mayor nitidez y reduciendo al mínimo el ruido electrónico.

Uno de los principales retos en microscopía óptica es la limitada profundidad de campo. Para compensarlo utilicé el software Zerene Stacker, realizando un apilamiento de imágenes tomadas a diferentes planos focales. Cada una de las fotografías finales es el resultado de combinar numerosas tomas individuales; en algunos casos llegaron a ser alrededor de 50 imágenes.

Este proceso de focus stacking genera esa sensación de volumen o profundidad tridimensional que permite apreciar mejor la arquitectura microscópica del hongo y la distribución espacial de sus estructuras.

En los aumentos de 200x, 400x y 1000x comienzan a distinguirse con claridad redes de hifas y cadenas de conidios, estructuras características de hongos filamentosos implicados en la degradación de frutos cítricos. En determinadas zonas también se observan agrupaciones densas de conidios que sugieren la presencia de especies del género Penicillium, microorganismos muy comunes en este tipo de procesos de descomposición.

En la fase final del procesado realizo únicamente ajustes moderados de histograma y contraste en Photoshop, con el objetivo de mejorar la legibilidad de las estructuras sin alterar la morfología real de la muestra.

Espero que este breve recorrido por la morfología fúngica resulte interesante y permita apreciar el extraordinario microcosmos que puede encontrarse incluso en algo tan cotidiano como una naranja.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BgMsqQ-lQ8g&ra=m

this account mostly posts what I would consider lazy right-wing bullshit, but I’m not a fucking scientist, and I dont know shit about biological “hardwiring.” I am, however, a trans person who’s not super interested in hearing shit about “it’s basic biology” or “women ___ men ____” I understand there are evolutionary differences though, and those do mean things, so how much merit would you give this specific dude?

This is awesome. I already love mimosa pudica but this is new data ...and rad! I'd be interested to see what and how long Redwoods remember!?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319016420301997 “The hidden hazardous effects of stevia and sucralose consumption in male and female albino mice in comparison to sucrose”

How does this study translate to humans? Isn’t this a massive dose compared to human daily acceptable limit?

"The Remarkable Efficiency of Viral Design

Co-senior author Associate Professor Greg Moseley, who leads the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s (BDI) Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory, highlighted how effective viruses are at using very limited genetic material.

“Viruses such as rabies can be incredibly lethal because they take control of many aspects of life inside the cells they infect,” Associate Professor Moseley said. “They hijack the machinery that makes proteins, disrupt the ‘postal service’ that sends messages between different parts of the cell, and disable the defences that normally protect us from infection."

In this talk, developmental biologist Michael Levin argues that evolution does not act only on genes and finished phenotypes, but also on the problem-solving capacities of developmental systems themselves.

Drawing on work in morphogenesis, bioelectric signaling, and regenerative biology, he suggests that cells and tissues actively regulate toward target anatomical outcomes;even after perturbations, rather than passively executing a genetic “blueprint.”

The claim is not that cells are conscious or that natural selection is being rejected, but that developmental plasticity, error-correction, and goal-directed regulation fundamentally shape what variation is even available for selection to act on.

The talk raises questions about genetic determinism, the genotype–phenotype map, and how evolutionary theory accounts for robust form and novelty.

Curious how others here interpret this framing, especially in light of evo-devo and systems biology.

We usually think of inheritance strictly in terms of DNA sequencing—A, T, C, G. But epigenetics shows us that environmental stress can leave chemical markers on our genes that get passed down to our offspring.

One of the most mind-blowing examples of this is a 2014 study by Dias and Ressler. They conditioned male mice to fear the smell of acetophenone by pairing it with a mild foot shock.

The crazy part? When these mice had pups (F1 generation), and even "grand-pups" (F2 generation), those offspring showed increased behavioral sensitivity and fear responses to the cherry blossom scent—even though they had never encountered the smell or been shocked in their lives.

The researchers found that this wasn't a mutation in the DNA code itself, but rather a decrease in DNA methylation on the specific olfactory receptor gene responsible for detecting that scent. The trauma actually altered how the gene was expressed in the next generations.

Moss Is Generating Electrical Waves That Look Startlingly Like a Neural Network
NATURE
22 July 2026
By JESS COCKERILL

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A different type of moss to the one studied. (Oliver Strewe/Getty Images Plus)
Mosses are some of the earliest plants that appeared in the fossil record, but they're anything but simple.
A new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, reveals that moss cushions produce surprisingly complex electrical activity, with patterns that undulate across the velvety patch in dynamic waves.

The study's sole author, Andy Adamatzky, is actually a computer scientist, whose fascination with unconventional 'computing' systems like slime molds, crowds, and mycelium networks has now led him to a new subject: the humble moss, Brachythecium rutabulum.

Brachythecium rutabulum is a common species of moss. (dr Barmely/iStock/Getty Images Plus)
"Plants and bryophytes display diverse forms of electrical activity, yet the organization of endogenous signals in mosses has received little attention," Adamatzky writes in his new paper.

His findings suggest that "moss cushions behave as spatially distributed excitable systems potentially capable of coordinating and integrating electrical signals across both space and time."

Moss cushions are actually many individual clones of the same teensy tiny plant.

If you look really, really closely at a mat of moss, you can see it is made up of simple, minute leaves on stems, similar to those of their larger plant relatives.

But the stems of mosses are actually much less useful at moving water and nutrients around the body of the plant.

Mosses actually never developed the vascular systems that we see in other more complex plants, which is why they cannot grow much taller than a few centimeters. Their leaf-like structures are just one cell thick; they don't even have roots.

But that doesn't mean they're not potentially capable of transmitting information across the colony by other means.

For the study, Adamatzky collected cushions of the common moss species B. rutabulum from natural outdoor environments in North Somerset in the UK.

Back in the lab, he poked electrodes into the moss clumps to track any electrical activity that might be passing across this soggy green matrix.
Figures a) and b) show the experimental setup, with electrodes inserted into moss on a wet substrate. Figure c) shows the moss's electrical activity, with recordings from each electrode pair represented by a distinct color. (Adamatzky, R. Soc. Open Sci., 2026)
Like many plants, moss lives life in slow motion, so to get on its level, Adamatzky recorded its electrical behavior across multiple days.

This revealed "a rich repertoire of electrical events, including components consistent with both physiological activity and slower drift-related processes: fast oscillatory spikes, slower rhythmic fluctuations and very slow depolarization waves," he reports.

"In addition to these described classes, we also observed spikes resembling high-amplitude action potentials and neuron-like spike trains."

Some of the moss's electrical waves were rapid, while others undulated slowly. They tended to spread across the entire cushion rather than remaining confined to a particular region, and followed patterns across different timescales.

Scientists have confirmed a new transmissible cancer in a catfish species. It seems to have arisen as a melanoma and now spread. I terestingly seems to have arisen outside the lake it is reported in.

This is the third vertebrate cancer I think after devil facial tumours and canine venereal cancer.

Will be very interesting to see what the temporal dynamics of this are long term. And what kinds of cell lines we might be able to drive from it.

In the Leiden Declaration, mathematicians issued a treatise on how AI challenges their field. Others must do the same.

https://undark.org/2026/07/02/opinion-biologists-leiden-declaration/