SEED MONEY

Day 5: Trapped

Babel Tower: A Kinetic Mirrored Ziggurat Reflects the Surrounding Iranian Landscape / By Shirin Abedinirad and Gugo Torelli.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Reaction stir and oil bubble.

I originally started making this material not necessarily for armors but more for cars and trains. [I wanted it] to squeeze like a sponge, but in a heavy duty kind of form of a sponge so we could put it in front of the car or a high speed train and take care of the impact. But when we saw the performance of the material, we started thinking about ballistics and bullets. And so I tested those and we saw that…the material can perform.

Afsaneh Rabiei. He developed a metal foam that is lightweight, strong, heat- and radiation-resistant, and, when incorporated in a bulletproof vest, for example, capable of shattering bullets on impact without injuring the person wearing it.

(via sciencefriday)

Reverse psychology that's not in psychology. Reverse biology...?

How did you decide to do a project with RNA?

I was having a conversation with someone in our department about how useful and cheap next-gen sequencing is, and how I was considering spending out my grant on a project looking at immune gene expression in spiders. He told me flat out that I wasn’t capable of doing it, because I wouldn’t understand it enough to ever publish. So I used a kit to extract RNA, sent off the samples, read a few books in the meantime, learned to code, wrote the scripts for R and the supercomputer, then did it. I’m writing it up now, and have found some pretty cool stuff! I’m glad I learned it too, since it’s a good skill to have.

TL;DR: some asshole told me I couldn’t do it, so I decided to do it.

Copper essential for burning fat, researchers find             

Though small amounts of copper are essential to health - oysters, liver, beans and nuts are good sources - copper’s role in metabolism has been unclear: Some studies found that it boosted fat burning, others that it depressed it.

University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have now clarified the critical role that copper plays in nutrition: It helps move fat out of fat cells - called adipocytes - and into the blood stream for use as energy.

Without enough copper, fat builds up in fat cells without being utilized, said Christopher Chang, the Class of 1942 Chair and a professor of chemistry and of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley.

“Unlike other studies that link copper levels both to increased or decreased fat metabolism, our study shows definitively how it works - it’s a signal that turns on fat cells,” said Chang, who also is a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “If we could find a way to burn fat more efficiently, this could be a big contribution to dealing with obesity and diabetes.”

The new study appeared online this week, and will be published in the July print issue of the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

“Copper regulates cyclic-AMP-dependent lipolysis” by Lakshmi Krishnamoorthy, Joseph A Cotruvo Jr, Jefferson Chan, Harini Kaluarachchi, Abigael Muchenditsi, Venkata S Pendyala, Shang Jia, Allegra T Aron, Cheri M Ackerman, Mark N Vander Wal, Timothy Guan, Lukas P Smaga, Samouil L Farhi, Elizabeth J New, Svetlana Lutsenko and Christopher J Chang in Nature Chemical Biology. Published online June 6 2016 doi:10.1038/nchembio.2098

Caption: The crystal structure of the cAMP-degrading enzyme phosphodiesterase PDE3B, showing two magnesium atoms (green) in the active site. Copper binds one of the amino acid residues in the pink loop at the left, blocking the activity of the enzyme. Credit: Lakshmipriya Krishnamoorthy and Joseph Cotruvo Jr., UC Berkeley

just saying carrying around beakers of acid to splash on people is nowhere close to proper PPE

which STEM students you should fight

chemistry: it’s not that STEM students aren’t all nerds, it’s that some of those students carry around beakers of acid. even if you actually manage to punch them, they’ll spill their chemicals on you. also something about constantly drawing hexagons makes people scarily organized. don’t fight chemistry students.

biology: depends. some of them can poison you. but if they’re pre-med, they’ll probably thank you for fighting them, they’re so goddamn stressed. on the other hand, avoid fighting the neuro students. they’ll just set their lab rats on you.

physics: do you know how unnecessarily sidetracked they get? they wouldn’t even fight you. they would just attach you to a spring and calculate your natural frequency as you bounce back and forth until you vomit and don’t want to fight them anymore. 

astronomy: yeah you can totally fight them if you can find them. they’re probably in one of those creepy observing domes so if you feel like going out of your way to get attacked by an axe murderer, sure.

geology: they will hit you over the head with rocks and dump your body into a volcano. do not fight the geologists.  

math: you can fight the math majors, but there would be no fun in it. they wouldn’t put up much of a fight, their heads are so far in the clouds. they probably wouldn’t even notice getting beaten up if they’re in the middle of a problem. 

engineering: look do you want to get hit with a wrench and/or electrocuted

computer science: yes. do it. fight the CS students. every time you’ve ever gotten pissed at a computer, put that rage into your strikes. plus they’ve got such mouths, it’ll be really satisfying. fight them!

NIGHTJARS

You heard me.  

Nightjars.

They are the BEST birds.  Don’t come at me with BUT CORVIDS y’all know Corvids aren’t birds, they’re magic.

Anyway.  Nightjars.  Why nightjars, you might ask.  Well let me tell  you why.

I’ve already told you about the Tawny Frogmouth

But there is also the Great Eared Nightjar

Pennant-winged Nightjar

Standard-winged Nightjar. Yes, those are part of its wings. No, I don’t know WTF.

This oddly shaped stump.  haha tricked you!  It’s a Tawny frogmouth and baby.

Lyretail Nightjar.  again, why.  again, no idea.

Australian owlet-nightjar

Swallowtail Nightjar.  Not so fancy?  look again. that mustache.

Not into cute mustaches on birds?

Tell that to this Sickle-winged Nightjar.  

Before it cuts you down with its badass wings.

Hey another stump - wait no it’s a FROGMOUTH

I’m not the first to have come to this conclusion.  

says right there.  BEST BIRD.

Ok whatever Indian Nightjar doesn’t care what you think about it.

If you don’t agree, you can sit over there and be wrong.