Hormonal sentience, first described by Robert A. Freitas Jr., describes the information processing rate in plants, which are mostly based on hormones instead of neurons like in all major animals (except sponges). Plants can to some degree communicate with each other and there are even examples of one-way-communication with animals.

Acacia trees produce tannin to defend themselves when they are grazed upon by animals. The airborne scent of the tannin is picked up by other acacia trees, which then start to produce tannin themselves as a protection from the nearby animals. When attacked by caterpillars, some plants can release chemical signals to attract parasitic wasps that attack the caterpillars.

A similar phenomenon can be found not only between plants and animals, but also between fungus and animals. There exists some sort of communication between a fungus garden and workers of the leaf-cutting ant Atta sexdens rubropilosa. If the garden is fed with plants that are poisonous for the fungus, it signals this to the ants, which then will avoid fertilizing the fungus garden with any more of the poisonous plant.The Venus flytrap, during a 1- to 20-second sensitivity interval, counts two stimuli before snapping shut on its insect prey, a processing peak of 1 bit/s. Mass is 10-100 grams, so the flytrap's SQ is about +1. Plants generally take hours to respond to stimuli though, so vegetative SQs (Sentience Quotient) tend to cluster around -2.In theory even an organism with a hormonal system instead of a nervous system could be intelligent in some degree, but it would be an extremely slow brain, to say the least.And yet, at least higher plants are able to produce electrical signals, even if they do not use them in the same way animals do. František Baluška from the University of Bonn in Germany is one of the authorities on plant neurobiology.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormonal_sentience

Plants do not have a brain or neuronal network, but reactions within signalling pathways may provide a biochemical basis for learning and memory in addition to computation and problem solving.Controversially, the brain is used as a metaphor in plant intelligence to provide an integrated view of signalling.Plants respond to environmental stimuli by movement and changes in morphology. They communicate while actively competing for resources. In addition, plants accurately compute their circumstances, use sophisticated cost–benefit analysis and take tightly controlled actions to mitigate and control diverse environmental stressors. Plants are also capable of discriminating positive and negative experiences and of "learning" (registering memories) from their past experiences. Plants use this information to update their behaviour in order to survive present and future challenges of their environment.Plant physiology studies the role of signalling, communication, and behaviour to integrate data obtained at the genetic, molecular, biochemical, and cellular levels with the physiology, development, and behaviour of individual organisms, plant ecosystems, and evolution. The neurobiological view sees plants as information-processing organisms with rather complex processes of communication occurring throughout the individual plant organism. It studies how environmental information is gathered, processed, integrated and shared (sensory plant biology) to enable these adaptive and coordinated responses (plant behaviour); and how sensory perceptions and behavioural events are 'remembered' in order to allow predictions of future activities upon the basis of past experiences. Plants, it is claimed by some plant physiologists, are as sophisticated in behaviour as animals but this sophistication has been masked by the time scales of plants' response to stimuli, many orders of magnitude slower than animals'.It has been argued that although plants are capable of adaptation, it should not be called intelligence, as plant neurobiologists are relying primarily on metaphors and analogies to argue that complex responses in plants can only be produced by intelligence.[32]"A bacterium can monitor its environment and instigate developmental processes appropriate to the prevailing circumstances, but is that intelligence? Such simple adaptation behaviour might be bacterial intelligence but is clearly not animal intelligence." However, plant intelligence fits a definition of intelligence proposed by David Stenhouse in a book about evolution and animal intelligence where he described it as "adaptively variable behaviour during the lifetime of the individual".Critics of the concept have also argued that a plant cannot have goals once it is past the development stage of plantlet because, as a modular organism, each module seeks its own survival goals and the resultant whole organism behavior is not centrally controlled.[33] This view, however, necessarily accommodates the possibility that a tree is a collection of individually intelligent modules cooperating with, competing with and influencing each other, thus determining organism level behavior from the base up. The development into a larger organism whose modules must deal with different environmental conditions and challenges is not universal across plant species either, as smaller organisms might be subject to the same conditions across their bodies, at least, when the below and above ground parts are considered separately. Moreover, the claim that central control of development is completely absent from plants is readily falsified by apical dominance.Charles Darwin studied the movement of plants and in 1880 published a book The Power of Movement in Plants. In the book he concludes:It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the tip of the radicle thus endowed [..] acts like the brain of one of the lower animals; the brain being situated within the anterior end of the body, receiving impressions from the sense-organs, and directing the several movements.In philosophy, there are few studies of the implications of plant perception. Michael Marder put forth a phenomenology of plant life based on the physiology of plant perception.Paco Calvo Garzon offers a philosophical take on plant perception based on the cognitive sciences and the computational modeling of consciousness.Comparison to neurobiology:.A plant's sensory and response system has been compared to the neurobiological processes of animals. Plant neurobiology, an unfamiliar misnomer, concerns mostly the sensory adaptive behaviour of plants and plant electrophysiology. Indian scientist J. C. Bose is credited as the first person to research and talk about neurobiology of plants. Many plant scientists and neuroscientists, however, view this as inaccurate, because plants do not have neurons.The ideas behind plant neurobiology were criticised in a 2007 article published in Trends in Plant Science by Amedeo Alpi and other scientists, including such eminent plant biologists as Gerd Jürgens, Ben Scheres, and Chris Sommerville. The breadth of fields of plant science represented by these researchers reflects the fact that the vast majority of the plant science research community reject plant neurobiology. Their main arguments are that:"Plant neurobiology does not add to our understanding of plant physiology, plant cell biology or signaling".

"There is no evidence for structures such as neurons, synapses or a brain in plants".The common occurrence of plasmodesmata in plants which "poses a problem for signaling from an electrophysiological point of view" since extensive electrical coupling would preclude the need for any cell-to-cell transport of a ‘neurotransmitter-like’ compounds.The authors call for an end to "superficial analogies and questionable extrapolations" if the concept of "plant neurobiology" is to benefit the research community.There were several responses to the criticism clarifying that the term "plant neurobiology" is a metaphor and metaphors have proved useful on several previous occasions.[37][38] Plant ecophysiology describes this phenomenon.Parallels in other taxa. As described above in the case of a plant, similar mechanisms exist in a bacterial cell, a choanoflagellate, a fungal hypha, or a sponge, among the many other examples. All of these individual organisms of the respective taxa, despite being devoid of a brain or nervous system, are capable of sensing their immediate and momentary environment and responding accordingly. In the case of single-celled life, the sensory pathways are even more primitive in the sense that they take place on the surface of a single cell, as opposed to a network of many cells.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_perception_(physiology)

Recent surprising similarities between plant cells and neuronsPlant cells and neurons share several similarities, including non-centrosomal microtubules, motile post-Golgi organelles, separated both spatially/structurally and functionally from the Golgi apparatus and involved in vesicular endocytic recycling, as well as cell-cell adhesion domains based on the actin/myosin cytoskeleton which serve for cell-cell communication. Tip-growing plant cells such as root hairs and pollen tubes also resemble neurons extending their axons. Recently, surprising discoveries have been made with respect to the molecular basis of neurodegenerative disorders known as Hereditary Spastic Paraplegias and tip-growth of root hairs. All these advances are briefly discussed in the context of other similarities between plant cells and neurons.There are very prominent similarities between tip-growing plant cells and the extending axons of neurons. However, recent advances reveal that these visible similarities stretch beyond the tip-growing plant cells and include plant tissue cells generating action potentials3 and accomplishing vesicle trafficking and recycling, typically at actin/myosin enriched cell-cell adhesion domains resembling neuronal synapses. Moreover, plant cells and neurons are similar from the cellular perspective, when most of their microtubules and Golgi apparatus organelles are not associated with the perinuclear centrosomes.In plant cells, Golgi stacks and Trans-Golgi Networks (TGNs) are motile organelles extending through the whole plant cells. Similarly in neurons centrosome-independent cortical microtubules are abundant in axons. They transport, among other cargo, so-called Golgi Outposts—which correspond to the TGNs of plant cells toward neuronal synapses. In both plant cells and neurons, TGNs act as independent organelles separated both spatially/structurally and functionally from the Golgi apparatus.Intriguingly, similarly as in neurons, also the TGN of plant cells is the inherent part of the endosomal/vesicular recycling pathways, supporting the dynamic and communicative nature of plant synapses.Plant action potentials (electric spikes) run in an axial direction, along the longitudinal axis of any plant organ, and the highest spike activity was scored in the transition zone of the root apex in maize.Hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) represents a heterogeneous group of genetic neurodegenerative disorders affecting the longest neurons of the human body, extending from the brain along the spinal cord /down to the legs.21 In the HSP disorders, axons of these long neurons degenerate causing problems in controlling leg muscles. One of the major genes in which mutation results in the HSP is Atlastin. Recent study has reported that Atlastin is homologous to the RHD3 protein of Arabidopsis.RHD3 protein is essential for proper growth and development of root hairs in Arabidopsis.Moreover, RHD3 is also important for the proper arrangement of root cell files which underlies the direction of root growth.In order to maintain their ordered cell files, root apex cross-walls (plant root synapses) perform active vesicle recycling. Both Arabidopsis RHD3 and Drosophila Atlastin are important for shaping tubular ER networks.RHD3 is also known to be required for the proper arrangement of the actin cytoskeleton and cell wall maintenance via vesicle trafficking.Moreover, similarly as Atlastin in neurons,RHD3 is important for the GA morphogenesis in plant cells too Importantly, both RHD3 and Atlastin are implicated in membrane tubulation and vesiculation whereas rhd3 mutant line emerges to be less active in endocytic internalization of FM endocytic tracer.Drosophila Atlastin regulates the stability of muscle microtubules and is required for both the axonal maintenance and synapse development. All this suggest that Arabidopsis emerges as an attractive and useful model object for investigations of mechanisms underlying HSP disorders in humans.Glutamate is one of the best understood and the most widespread excitatory .neurotransmitter which is perceived via glutamate receptors at brain synapses in animals and humans. These neuronal receptors have, in fact, deep evolutionary origin in prokaryotic bacteria, and are present also in plants., Importantly, the plant glutamate receptors have all the features of neuronal ones, and glutamate induces plant action potentials., All this strongly suggest that glutamate serves in neurotransmitter-like cell-cell communication in plants too. Interestingly in this respect, especially the root apices are target of the neuronal-like activity of glutamate in plants, with effects on cell development, root growth, morphogenesis, and behavior. The transition zone cells, localized between the apical meristem and basal cell elongation zone, respond to glutamate with rapid depolarization of the plasma membrane and this response is blocked by a specific antagonist of ionotropic glutamate receptors, 2-amino-5-phosphonopentanoate.Cells of the transition zone, also known as the distal elongation zone or the basal meristem, are crucial for root primordia priming,and exogenous glutamate is known to decrease primary root growth and increase lateral root proliferation.Beta-N-methylamino-L-alanine (BMAA) is a neurotoxic amino acid, derived from cycads, which is well-known to act as agonists and antagonists of mammalian glutamate receptors. BMAA inhibits root growth, cotyledon opening, and it stimulates elongation of light-grown hypocotyls in Arabidopsis.BMAA affects growth of Arabidopsis organs at very low concentrations, and these BMAA-induced effects are reversed by the addition of glutamate.This is consistent with a scenario wherein BMAA acts to block plant-specific glutamate receptors.Similarly to glutamate, aluminium also induces very rapid plasma membrane depolarization specifically in cells of the root apex transition zone. Moreover, glutamate and aluminium both induce rapid and strong calcium spikes with unique signatures in cells of the transition zone.These root cells represent the primary target for the aluminium toxicity in plants, whereas aluminium is not toxic to root cells which have already entered the rapid elongation region.Similarly, although aluminium is not so toxic in most plant cells, neuronal-like tip-growing root hairs and pollen tubes1,2 are sensitive to aluminium similarly as are the transition zone cells. In these latter cells, aluminium is specifically internalized via endocytosis. Internalized endocytic aluminium interferes with vesicle trafficking/recycling and endocytosis, inhibiting the PIN2-driven basipetal auxin transport in the transition zone of root apices.Aluminium targets specifically the auxinsecreting plant synapses and affects the polar auxin-transport-based root cell patterning. Moreover, aluminium affects also nitric oxide (NO) production which is highest in cells of the the distal portion of the transition zone. Importantly, the rapidly elongating root cells are not sensitive towards aluminium and neither is there internalization of aluminium into rapidly elongating root cells. In support of the endocytosis of aluminium being the primary process linked to the aluminium toxicity in root cells, endocytosis of aluminium and its toxicity is lowered in the Arabidopsis mutant over-expressing the DnaJ domain protein auxillin which regulates the clathrin-based endocytosis.In animals and humans, neuronal cells are extremely sensitive towards aluminium which is internalized via endocytosis specifically in these cells. Aluminium was found to be enriched in lysosomes, similarly like Alzheimer’s amyloid β-peptide plaque depositions. These are also internalized from cell surface and aluminium was reported to inhibit their degradation.In conclusion, in both transition zone root cells and neurons, endocytosis of aluminium emerges as relevant to its high biotoxicity. In plants, the aluminium toxicity is the most important limiting factor for crop production in acid soil environments worldwide. Further studies on these cells might give us crucial clues not only for plant biology and agriculture but also for our still limited understanding of the Alzheimer disease. In line with the original proposal of Charles and Francis Darwin, root apices of plants represent neuronal/anterior pole of plant bodies

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2884105/

This herring gull was chattering and pecking it's reflection on the window of this truck. I think he was trying to communicate with it's reflection.

Above is a 1950's 6 meter (50mhz) AM rig also know (affectionately) as the 'Gooney Box'.

I spent too much time this morning trying to find info on my old 2 meter version of this.

2 meter AM was the only VHF mode that I was licensed for back in 72. I was just curious on it's specs but believe it put out 7 watts. I know a matching 100 watt 6 meter amp existed and on the web today I found a photo of a bright Yellow carrying case for these old curios.

Pentax LX SMC PENTAX-M 1:1.7 50mm Adox HR-50 LegacyPro EcoPro 1+1 03/31/2024

X100F w/WCL-X100

Outside of my window, apparently had a lot to say!

Pattern for internal light reflector

I was tasked with creating a new logo for Living Waters Church. The church has a very casual atmosphere with a healthy mixture of younger families and empty nesters. We value creativity and allow people to express themselves in different creative ways, one of them being through painting during the worship set of our service. Every week we usually have one or two artists painting live as the worship is happening. We keep the best artwork and put it on display throughout our church, almost like an art gallery. It's definitely something that's unique to us (at least in our area) so I figured it would make sense to communicate that through the logo.

Incase you're wondering, the brush stroke is in fact a vector, so it will scale nicely for whatever we need.

Still not sure if I like the typeface and it's arrangement. I can't put a finger on it, but it seems like it's not quite there yet. I'd love to here what everyone else thinks!

From June 1993: while going through hours of recorded rail radio traffic, I found this exchange between the CSX SM Dispatcher who was controlling the former B&O in the Middletown Ohio area. This dispatcher had a reputation for no nonsense. D744 (a symbol today used for a Lima south local) apparently didn't have a working engine radio and had to have another train relay all of the messages.

When I was her age the phone was connected to the wall and having something like an iphone was from the tv series Startrek and their ones didn't have apps, facebook, tweets,google earth etc.

Beam me up Scotty.

Minolta Autocord 1956

Taken at f3.5 on tripod using self timer

Kodak Portra 400

Singapore, Tamron SP 500/8

Kingsville postoffice, tiled wall, street lights and a 7-11 sign..

Three and a half year old female Giant Panda, Bao Bao, at the Smithsonian National Zoo, in Washington DC

Villa Cavrois, Croix, France, 1932

Architect Robert Mallet Stevens (1886-1945)

Built between 1929 and 1932, the villa was the result of an order placed by Paul Cavrois with the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens to house his family of seven children and his domestic servants. Covered in yellow facing bricks set on a concrete frame and double brick walls, the villa was thought out as a total work of art comprising an exemplary case of homogenous construction between architecture, decoration and furniture. It is the architect’s technical and aesthetic manifesto in terms of the care given to its materials and equipment. Clear guidelines governed the design of the building: “air, light, work, sports, hygiene, comfort and efficiency”.

The Villa Cavrois is a masterpiece of modern architecture and a unique example in the North of France. The villa is 60 meters long, it has 3.800 m² including 1.840 m² habitables and 830 m² of terraces and a garden of 17.600 m² (originally 5 ha). The Villa Cavrois is a testimony to the modernist vision of the 1920s as it was conceived by designers such as Le Corbusier, Pierre Chareau and the Bauhaus school. Luminosity, hygiene and comfort are the keywords that underlie such buildings. Villa Cavrois illustrates this concept with simplicity and elegance. The large modern mansion was organized to offer the best possible lifestyle to the nine members of the family and to facilitate the daily work of the household staff. Mallet-Stevens' work was not limited to the design of the building. He also designed the interior decoration and the gardens which surround the house. The choice of materials, concrete ceiling, metal, steel, glass, green Swedish marble in the main dining room, yellow Sienna marble in the fireplace alcove of the hall-salon, parquets of oak, iroko, zebrawood, Cuban mahogany, and the furniture of the rooms echoed the hierarchy of space: everything was conceived and adapted for use in place. Simplicity and functionality of the furniture prevail in all parts. The luxury of this house does not lie in carved detailing or gilding, it unfolds in the richness of the materials used, such as unadorned marble, metal and wood. The Villa Cavrois provided for its occupants a large number of amenities especially rare for the time, even in luxury houses. Use of the latest modern technology, especially electricity meant each room was provided with electric lighting, a radio loudspeaker, an electric clock and telephones enabled people to communicate between rooms or with the outside world. The villa was equipped with a modern boiler room and a wine cellar. The water system provided hot and cold water, as well as softened water for cooking and drinking. Lighting was the object of special care. The lighting, both direct and indirect, is very delicate and elegant. In collaboration with the lighting engineer André Salomon, Mallet-Stevens conceived an indirect lighting which fit in the architecture and he has provided most of the rooms of the villa of a lighting device system which direct the light towards the ceiling to obtain an unchanging light closer at the natural one. Hygiene was very important in the conception of the Villa Cavrois, as it is shown by the clinical aspect of the kitchen of metal and white paint and also by the presence of a swimming pool of 27 metres long and 4 metres depth at the diving boards.

The villa was occupied by German troops between 1940 and 1944 and was damaged at the end of the war. When he returned in 1947, Paul Cavrois called upon architect Pierre Barbe to add two apartments for his elder sons. The family lived in the villa until 1985. The following year, it was sold to a real estate firm that wanted to subdivide the park. Despite its automatic classification as a historic monument in 1990, the villa was no longer maintained by its owner. The State bought the property, which was in serious danger, in 2001, and undertook a major restoration project to its original historic condition as when it was inaugurated in 1932. The lighting, the furnishings attached to the decorations, as well as the bookcases and benches have all been restored using the original materials. The parquet floorings, metal doorframes and marbles have been restored or returned. The restoration of the park has returned it to the original land’s very subtle gradient with the precise layout of the alleyways, while replanting plant species identified from old photographs. The reflecting pool, which had been filled in during the war, and the swimming pool have been restored to their original state. The restoration was carried out between 2009 and 2015. Since 2012, the villa has been part of a worldwide conservation programme for emblematic houses of the 20th century, “Iconic Houses”.

We know that our campus Red-tailed Hawks, Ezra and Big Red communicate with each other in many ways, some of which we can see and hear--some remains a mystery. On this beautiful afternoon (April 9), we were able to observe the ways these birds seem to stay in constant communication visually and audibly. During the time we were watching the nest (4:30-6p), several non-Ezra and Big Red hawks were in the air over central campus, so it was a busy time for both birds. Ezra and Big Red took turns interacting with the interlopers in a thrilling aerial display, that took the hawks (up to 4 at one time) up and down campus, overhead, and out of sight from time to time (with a few Crows getting into the fray as well). From this day's observations and others we've accumulated over the years, we believe that Ezra is never far away when Big Red is on the nest, and even if he is...he can see her, and hear her--and will return in an instant if that is her desire.. This image: Ezra nest pole fly-by (the part of the nest known as the "fledge ledge" can just barely be seen on the right). With my eyes fixed on the nest--he appeared out of nowhere--he was on patrol--other hawks were in the area, and it was time to stay close to the nest.

Detail from statue of Dom José I, Praca do Comercio. In the backgorund the staute on top of the Arco da Rua Augusta. Lisbon, Portugal

jsc2026e021107 (April 4, 2026) – CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut and backup Artemis II crew member Jenni Gibbons serves as capsule communicator (capcom) during an Orion manual piloting demonstration on the fourth day of the mission. Credit: NASA/Bill Stafford

El 60% de la comunicación humana es no verbal: lenguaje corporal.

El 30% es tu tono de voz.

Eso significa que el 90% de lo que estas diciendo no está viniendo de tu boca.

Art journaling June 14, 2016

By Kathryn Zbrzezny

Taken at a March against Bill C-59 in Montreal. Anonymous members and a group thought to be affiliated to Pegida clashed on Sept 26th at Émilie-Gamelin Park. Shot with a Minolta 7000 on Fuji Acros 100 film.

We were about to cross the street and I found this girl, so immersed in her texting...

The mobile phone network in Haiti was vital in the weeks and months after the 2010 earthquake. Aid agencies such as the Red Cross used text messaging to communicate public health information to hundreds of thousands of people, helping to prevent the spread of disease.

Photograph: Russell Watkins/Department for International Development

So I am sitting, waiting for my car, and this guy walks by carrying a copy of the book Inside Star Trek by Herb Solow and Robert H. Justman (the show's producers). "Great book," I said. And then he stops to chat a minute, and shows me this.

It is a communicator that links to your cell phone. Best Buy sells them. They are super realistic, having been scanned from an original prop. I was wowed.

It chirps when opened. The whirl whirls. The buttons light up (and are used to answer the phone).

Sony A7R with Minolta MD 28mm f2.8

midtown manhattan, nyc.

Classic Space Message Transmitting Communicator

May I proudly present - the latest release to satisfy your needs for modern space exploration in the classic space style!

The Message Transmitting Communicator is an All-In-One (AIO) solution and comes with a full equiped lab and small rover attached to you. The MTC-AIO is well equiped with all the stuff your spacemen would love to. This includes

- full automatic air conditioner,

- electric windows,

- autopilot,

- navigation device with pre installed map of the known milky way,

- Meteoride side impact protection

and planetary pre crash savety assistant.

Just visit you local classic space dealer to make your personal test drive...eh flight.

WARNING: Warranty void if not manned with classic spacemen!

Behind the scene:

I build a new medium sized modell in the nice 1985-color scheme. I added a few build elements from the Gamma-V Laser Craft to get it more vintage. It consist of 4 modules (Cockpit, Lab, Engine and Rover). Full assembled, the rover fits exactly to the ground when landed.

4 canopies can be opened, 3 of them are at the lab to give an easy access to the lab. The whole model is 100% swooshing compatible and would fit very well in every cs-collection. :)

Part count by LDD is about 180 pcs (without minifigs).

IAF's helicopters worked side by side with 669 Search & Rescue unit during Operation "Protective Edge", evacuting more then 240 wounded soldiers

Photography: Hagar Amibar

במהלך מבצע "צוק איתן" פעלו טייסות מסוקי הסער בשיתוף עם יחידה 669, וחילצו למעלה מ-240 פצועים מרצועת עזה

צילום: הגר עמיבר

My friend never let anything stand in the way of being a comedian. He enjoyed long amusing joke-telling sessions which were largely incomprehensible but apparently hilarious, and he often chose non-verbal people to share his anecdotes with. It's illuminating to observe how well people can communicate without formal language, and how much comfort and connection can be established in the absence of the words that fill up a typical conversation.

jsc2026e019614 (April 2, 2026) – NASA astronaut Chris Birch serves as capsule communicator (capcom) in the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center during the mission’s translunar injection burn, which sent the crew in Orion out of Earth orbit and on a trajectory toward the Moon. Credit: NASA