Poison Oak Rash

Poison Oak Rash
Anyone can be affected by allergy caused by poison oak. The poison oak rashes are caused in the skin when it is exposed to the plant that goes by the same name, a plant that usually grows in mountainous areas.



Explicitly a poison oak rash is an allergic reaction to urushiol, which is an oil that is located in poison oak. The roots, leaves, and stems of poison oak are rich in urushiol oil.


 Urushiol can be without difficulty transferred from Poison Oak to other objects, including clothing, toys, tools, and animals. This chemical can continue actively for a year or more. It is essential to know that the oils can also be transferred from clothing, pets that have made contact with the plant.
Your skin may come into contact with this oil in the following situations:

Touching any part of the plant.
Touching any article or thing that has been in touch with the urushiol oil or the poison oak.
By getting in contact with the fur of an animal that has been near the urushiol oil or poison oak.
As you inhale smoke from burning poison oak.
Scratching the blisters produced by poison oak does not produce a spread of the rash, as this is not contagious; the only element capable of causing this rash is the urushiol oil which is present in the sap of poison oak.

Because the allergic reaction caused by poison oak is classified most of the time as a type of poison ivy.

Poison oak rash is a common skin allergic reaction that occurs when one exposes their skin to the poison oak plant oil secretes. The oil is known as Urushiol and is found in the plants' poisonous roots, stems, and leaves. Urushiol is easily transferred from poison oak to toys, tools, clothes and even animals and can remain active for a period longer than a year. Poison oak oil can also be passed from pets and clothes that have had contact with poison oak plant. A skin can get into contact with the oil through touching the poison oak plant, touching anything that has had contact with poison oak or Urushiol, touching furs of an animal that has had contact with poison oak or Urushiol oil and by inhaling smoke from poison oak that is burning.

Poison oak rash develops in different stages and degrees of harshness for different people. When one starts reacting to it, the area affected will become red and swell and as it gets worse, the affected area develops vesicles, papules, blisters and even oozing. How severe the rashes get is directly dependent on the strength of one's immune system. If your body reacts faster to the poison oak, you will get severe symptoms that will look nastier. The rashes last for about two weeks and as your skin heals the marks and blisters all disappear. Severe cases of the rash last for approximately one month to completely heal.

If you suffer from poison oak rash the following treatments are available to help you get relief. You can run cool water on the affected parts for immediate relief. To have lasting relief using this method, put water on a towel or cloth and put it on top of the rash. You can also fill your bathtub with cool water and get in it for relief.

You can also make use of over the counter medications like calamine lotion that soothes the skin and prevent itching and also dries the crusts caused by the rashes and blisters.

Use ingredients such as baking soda and vinegar to make a treatment. All you need to do is to mix the ingredients and make a paste like a peanut butter paste then go to the shower and vigorously rub the mixture in the affected area as water runs on you. You will feel sore and discomfort as you begin but you will feel great after some time.

Although poison oak rash is easily treated at home, if you have severe symptoms due to your immune system or your mucus membranes such as genitals, eyes, nose and even mouth have got into contact with Urushiol, you are advised to see a doctor for medical treatment.

Since poison oak can stay in the cloths for over one year, it is important that clothes that get into contact with the plant be washed with water and soap using the washing machine to prevent further poisoning and objects with the poison cleaned with alcohol. Pets must also be bathed if they have been exposed to the poison oak plant. If you can't avoid getting into contact with the plant then it is advisable that you apply hydrocortisone cream, calamine lotion or antihistamine oral ingestion. It is easy to prevent poisoning from the plant by wearing clothes that cover your body when going to areas where you are exposed to the plant. Poison oak rash is easy to treat so you need not pan, c however, should your symptoms be severe, see your doctor.

Albino Animals: Albino Cat

Albino Cat
An albino cat is a cat that is completely white and has pink eyes, due to a rare genetic condition that causes the animal to have no pigmentation of the skin, hair or eyes. The eyes appear pink because, without pigmentation, you can see the blood vessels of the eyes.



Throughout history, the albino cat has been revered as special. While the albino cat is not a specific breed, there are some types of cats that are more likely to produce an albino cat in their litter, including the Siamese cat and the Bengal tiger. It is suspected that, during the 1300s, the King of Siam had an albino cat and that Siamese cats are descendants of this line.



Siamese cats have a heat sensitive coat. They are born white and appear albino, and the climate in which they are raised helps determine the final color of their coat. Siamese cats raised in warmer climates will have whiter coats, their coats darken with age and exposure to cold.



Many people consider the true albino cat to be quite exotic, and purchasing an albino cat can be rather expensive. Albino kittens have been known to be sold for well over $3000 each.

25 Pictures of Jaguars

pictures of jaguars

A wild male jaguar (Panthera onca) near the Rio Negro in the Pantanal, Brazil.
Jaguars from the Pantanal are the largest of their species, about 2.7 m (8.9 ft) long, with an average weight of about 100 kg (220 lb), and some weighing more than 135 kg (298 lb).



Photo By Charles J. Sharp/wiki

melanistic jaguar

Large melanistic Jaguar snarling.

Black Jaguar  What a powerful stare!
Panther (Panthera onca), also known as a Black Jaguar













A jaguar cub was born to first-time mother, Aswa, at River Safari on Nov 16, 2017.
PHOTO: WILDLIFE RESERVES SINGAPORE

Panthera Onca Jaguar

Development of Xenopus laevis

Development of Xenopus laevis
History as a model organism

Scientists have used Xenopus laevis, an African clawed frog, to understand embryogenesis and development since the 1800s. Prior to the 1930s, researchers would go out in the spring during the breeding season, do as many experiments with the eggs as possible, and then analyze results for the rest of the year until the next spring.
However, in the 1930s, it was discovered that if urine from a pregnant woman was injected into a frog, a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) would cause the frog to ovulate, even out of season. It wasn't long before this technique was used as a standard to detect pregnancy.



Tails have elongated slightly and pigmentation is more prominent.
(02/16/18)


While this was an effective human pregnancy test for a few decades, it was an eventually replaced by the immunoassays used today. However, hCG continues to be used to induce ovulation in Xenopus, allowing developmental biologists to conduct experiments year round. The female frog can stay alive, and fertilization can be induced many times.



View of a single tadpole.
Nostrils are developing more and stomach is more prominent.
(02/21/18)




The embryos now have the characteristic tadpole shape as their anterior end widens and posterior end elongates.
The developing stomach is visible.
Eyes are becoming more sophisticated in structure.
The heart is barely visible near the stomach.
Nostrils are visible.
(02/19/18)



Larval stage, with jelly coat still present.
(02/14/18)



Yolk has significantly reduce.
The tail has also elongated and the dark spots are eyes.
The cement gland is reddish in color.
(02/15/18)



Lone tadpole in a vertical orientation.
Groups of them would do this at a time, hanging from the surface of the water.
(02/16/18)

This ease of availability to eggs is just one reason that Xenopus is an ideal model for development. The eggs are large enough to see even the earliest stages of development, and because they are covered in a protective jelly instead of a shell, there is an unobstructed view of these processes. There is also a high level of translatability between the frog and human developmental genetics.



This series will explore the development of Xenopus laevis, by way of fertilization, cleavage, gastrulation, neurulation, organogenesis, and metamorphosis from tadpole to adult.

Xenopus Laevis Oocyte

Xenopus Laevis Oocyte - X. laevis is also notable for its use in the first well-documented method of pregnancy testing when it was discovered that the urine from pregnant women induced X. laevis oocyte production. Human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) is a hormone found in substantial quantities in the urine of pregnant women. Today, commercially available HCG is injected into Xenopus males and females to induce mating behavior and to breed these frogs in captivity at any time of the year.

"Some [North American] hospitals [in the 1940s] dumped surplus frogs into nearby streams, where these prolific breeders flourished and are now considered pests."



Ovary under the microscope with many oocytes




Opened oocyte with nucleus

O’Connell et al. address a critical issue affecting many electrophysiologists who use Xenopus laevis oocytes for ion channel research: common infection by multi-drug–resistant bacteria. The researchers examine the effectiveness of 25 different antibiotics in treating the infections and establish an antibiotic cocktail protocol that maximizes oocyte quality.

More big winners from the Arizona Science and Engineering Fair earlier this month: Grand Prize Winner Aakash Jain ’14 presented his project “Optimization of the Xenopus laevis Oocyte Expression System.” He received a 1st PL award Cellular and Molecular Biology in addition to a special sward for In Vitro Biology Research. Aakash also took 3rd PL in a research poster contest at ASU. Aakash's Grand Prize award earns him a spot on ASU's SCENE team going to Intel's International Science & Engineering Fair.

African Clawed Frogs

African Clawed Frogs
African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) are an aquatic frog found throughout much of Sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria and Sudan to South Africa). You can find them at reptile shows and are extremely hardy living up to 20 or even 30 years in captivity.

Up and until the 60's these frogs were used for pregnancy tests, exported all over the world for this use. The problem now is that labs released them into the wild when modern pregnancy tests became available. They carry a virus that kills other frogs outside of Africa.




A peculiar looking frog, that spends most of its life in the water. They can live just about in any type of aquatic environment, in clean water or not!







So strange... Like a small fish, the tadpole of Xenopus laevis, South-African clawed frog.
Fascinating creatures with their antennae and tail tips with which they maintain trim!

African Clawed Frogs also are known as Xenopus laevis caught at the Ysterklip farm dam. The Ysterclip farm dam is a clay dam with clear water which is the reason for their light, muddy skin colouration. Photo by A. de Villiers



Xenopus laevis is an important model organism for biology because scientists can induce egg laying. Originally, this was used in pregnancy tests. Urine from women would be injected into a frog and scientists would see if this induced egg laying, meaning the woman is pregnant. The chemical responsible for this is hCG and is still used today by scientists and in over the counter pregnancy tests.

African-clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) hiding underneath aquatic vegetation along the shallow edges of the Barcarena Stream, Oeiras, Portugal. Photo by F. Ihlow.

Xenopus laevis from a breeding population that has persisted at the Arthur Pack Golf Course in Tucson, Arizona, USA since the 1960s. Photo taken in 2015 by Jeff Dawson.

My favorite frog... They can make metallic clicking sounds, and both the males and females call underwater using these sounds. The Frogs of Southern Africa app has a recording of it




These frogs can definitely "sing". I used to keep them as pets in an aquarium as a kid and they made such a racket at night. My parents used to complain to me about it because the tank was situated right outside their bedroom window.