How Microorganisms Move
This week’s episode of Coma Niddy University is a science parody to How Animals Eat Their Food. Watch me make a fool of myself imitating how different microbes move around.
[Watch the Video]
(Source: comaniddy)
![OSU’s third consecutive ‘Corpse flower’ bloom in the past three years.
[Imaged above: A screenshot of OSU greenhouse visitors posing for the ever-popular O-H-I-O photo-op with Woody as the “I”. Below: A gif of Woody blooming through out the day.]
OSU’s biological sciences greenhouse has experienced it’s third consecutive corpse-flower bloom for the third year in a row. The rare and stinky corpse flower, also known as titan arum, belongs naturally in Sumatra, and can grow up to 10 feet tall, with a diameter 5-6 ft.
The largest recorded titan arum inflorescence:
Bonn (Germany), May 2003, 274 cm
Wageningen (The Netherlands), 1932, 267 cm
Bogor (Indonesia), 261 cm
Bonn (Germany), 2000, 257.5 cm
New York (USA), 1937, 256.5 cm
Frankfurt (Germany), 1985, 250 cm*
(* In contrast tot he other flowerings, the Frankfurt plant was measured from the tuber upward (2.7m). For comparison with other plants, therefore, about 20 cm have to be deducted.) Source: Bonn Botanical Garden.
The flower that opened up today at OSU for excited-viewers is named Woody. This will be Woody’s second blooming, after blooming two years ago, whilst another corpse flower at OSU, named Jesse, bloomed last year. Woody, itself, reaches over 70-inches tall, and has been growing a recorded 4-5 inches a day since first sprouting.
Although, in it’s natural habitat, the female and male corpse flowers will tend to bloom within days of each other, OSU’s corpse flowers must be hand-pollinated to obtain new seeds. Since the flower was discovered in the late 1800s, there have been less than around 175 blooms world-wide, 29 of which were within the U.S. as of 2010, making OSU’s 3-year blooming phenomenon a noteworthy occurrence in the world of plant-sciences.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/241f153eeb7a9c74e0956e70ceb0ec4e/tumblr_mmtlkyweTZ1r39hw6o1_r4_1280.png)
OSU’s third consecutive ‘Corpse flower’ bloom in the past three years.
[Imaged above: A screenshot of OSU greenhouse visitors posing for the ever-popular O-H-I-O photo-op with Woody as the “I”. Below: A gif of Woody blooming through out the day.]
OSU’s biological sciences greenhouse has experienced it’s third consecutive corpse-flower bloom for the third year in a row. The rare and stinky corpse flower, also known as titan arum, belongs naturally in Sumatra, and can grow up to 10 feet tall, with a diameter 5-6 ft.
The largest recorded titan arum inflorescence:
- Bonn (Germany), May 2003, 274 cm
- Wageningen (The Netherlands), 1932, 267 cm
- Bogor (Indonesia), 261 cm
- Bonn (Germany), 2000, 257.5 cm
- New York (USA), 1937, 256.5 cm
- Frankfurt (Germany), 1985, 250 cm*
(* In contrast tot he other flowerings, the Frankfurt plant was measured from the tuber upward (2.7m). For comparison with other plants, therefore, about 20 cm have to be deducted.) Source: Bonn Botanical Garden.
The flower that opened up today at OSU for excited-viewers is named Woody. This will be Woody’s second blooming, after blooming two years ago, whilst another corpse flower at OSU, named Jesse, bloomed last year. Woody, itself, reaches over 70-inches tall, and has been growing a recorded 4-5 inches a day since first sprouting.
Although, in it’s natural habitat, the female and male corpse flowers will tend to bloom within days of each other, OSU’s corpse flowers must be hand-pollinated to obtain new seeds. Since the flower was discovered in the late 1800s, there have been less than around 175 blooms world-wide, 29 of which were within the U.S. as of 2010, making OSU’s 3-year blooming phenomenon a noteworthy occurrence in the world of plant-sciences.
(Source: thescienceofreality)
Earth’s Major Telescopes Investigate GRB 130427A
Illustration Credit: NASA, DOE, Fermi LAT Collaboration
“A tremendous explosion has occurred in the nearby universe and major telescopes across Earth and space are investigating. Dubbed GRB 130427A, the gamma-ray burst was first detected by the Earth-orbiting Fermi and Swift satellites observing at high energies and quickly reported down to Earth. Within three minutes, the half-meter ISON telescope in New Mexico found the blast in visible light, noted its extreme brightness, and relayed more exact coordinates. Within the next few minutes, the bright optical counterpart was being tracked by several quickly re-pointable telescopes including the 2.0-meter P60 telescope in California, the 1.3-meter PAIRITEL telescope in Arizona, and the 2.0-meterFaulkes Telescope North in Hawaii. Within two hours, the 8.2-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii noted a redshift of 0.34, placing the explosion about 5 billion light years away — considered nearby in cosmological terms. Previously recorded images from the RAPTOR full-sky monitors were scanned and a very bright optical counterpart — magnitude 7.4 — was found 50 seconds before the Swift trigger. The brightest burst in recent years, a signal from GRB 130427A has also been found in low energy radio waves by the Very Large Array (VLA) and at the highest energies ever recorded by the Fermi satellite. Neutrino, gravitational wave, and telescopes designed to detect only extremely high energy photons are checking their data for a GRB 130427A signal. Pictured in the above animation, the entire gamma-ray sky is shown becoming momentarily dominated by the intense glow of GRB 130427A. Continued tracking the optical counterpart will surely be ongoing as there is a possibility that the glow of a classic supernova will soon emerge.”
3-D Printed Material Mimics Biological Tissue
For the first time, scientists have printed structures that mimic the texture, consistency and certain properties of biological tissue. The manmade “tissues” are nothing more than water droplets encased in oil, stacked atop one another, but the scientists were able to construct stable structures that held their form for weeks, structures that conducted electricity and even structures that folded similarly to how muscle cells do.
The researchers used a type of 3-D printer to eject an aqueous solution (water containing some salts) into a bead of oil, which was suspended in more of the aqueous solution. By carefully arranging the droplets, the researchers were able to get them to stick together. In other words “You’re just dropping spheres onto other sticky spheres.” After the “print” was completed, the researchers skimmed off the extra oil, leaving a sturdy, jelly-like structure that somewhat resembled brain and fat tissues.
The research was detailed in this week’s issue of the journal Science.
Source: technewsdaily.com
The Asteroids in our Neighborhood
Check out this video from Scott Manley, tracing thirty years of asteroid discovery and the deployment of new and more sensitive instruments to find them. From the green main belt asteroids, to the yellow dots that cross Venus’ orbit, to the red that come near our own orbit … space has a lot of stuff in it. Nearly 600,000 objects known at the latest update.
But that doesn’t mean we’re in any special danger. As these objects, most very tiny, travel through their wonky, often angled orbits, they travel through a volume of 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic km, or enough to fit a trillion Earths. Space may have a lot of stuff in it, but it’s also very big.
Rest easy. We’re watching the skies.
Being a scientist has nothing to do with gender or race. Science is all about methodically seeking the truth. Take your curiosities and get your science on.
Watch this Science Rap and more on my YouTube Channel: Coma Niddy University.
(Source: comaniddy)
From its cosmic perch, on the far-side of the Sun, the on-board space telescope STEREO-B snapped hundreds of images of the comet Pan-STARRS as it rounded the Sun from March 9th to March 16th. Now thanks to the hard work of analyst Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab, every one of those images have been stitched together to create an awesome video of the icy interloper’s travels.
Specular holograms by Matthew Brand currently on display at the new Museum of Mathematics in New York.
See his site for more.
The technique used by Brand to create these pieces is not one of conventional holography. He meticulously controls the unique shape of thousands of tiny optical pieces placed on a surface creating a 3D effect when the light source or viewer moves. This is essentially a mathematical problem in differential geometry and combinatorial optimization. Brand was the first person to correctly describe this technique in 2008 even though it dates back as early as the 1930s (check out his paper for details).
Are you ready to meet your microbiome? Then click the gif above!
Or here: http://youtu.be/4BZME8H7-KU
And subscribe! www.youtube.com/itsokaytobesmart
Perseid Swoosh
A perseid meteor is seen dashing by as it leaves a wonderful streak that almost looks like the shape of a cartoon heart.
Copyright: Guillaume Cannat
“Within Two Worlds depicts an alternate perspective by giving us the illusion of times movement, signifying a beginning and end within a world of constant contradiction. It appears you are traveling in the midst of a dream, half-sleeping, half-waking, and touching the arch connecting heaven and earth.”
NASA Rover Confirms First Drilled Mars Rock Sample
[Imaged below: From a position in the shallow “Yellowknife Bay” depression, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity used its right Mast Camera (Mastcam) to take the telephoto images combined into this panorama of geological diversity.]
“ NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has relayed new images that confirm it has successfully obtained the first sample ever collected from the interior of a rock on another planet. No rover has ever drilled into a rock beyond Earth and collected a sample from its interior.
Transfer of the powdered-rock sample into an open scoop was visible for the first time in images received Wednesday at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“Seeing the powder from the drill in the scoop allows us to verify for the first time the drill collected a sample as it bore into the rock,” said JPL’s Scott McCloskey, drill systems engineer for Curiosity. “Many of us have been working toward this day for years. Getting final confirmation of successful drilling is incredibly gratifying. For the sampling team, this is the equivalent of the landing team going crazy after the successful touchdown.”
The drill on Curiosity’s robotic arm took in the powder as it bored a 2.5-inch (6.4-centimeter) hole into a target on flat Martian bedrock on Feb. 8. The rover team plans to have Curiosity sieve the sample and deliver portions of it to analytical instruments inside the rover.
The scoop now holding the precious sample is part of Curiosity’s Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) device. During the next steps of processing, the powder will be enclosed inside CHIMRA and shaken once or twice over a sieve that screens out particles larger than 0.006 inch (150 microns) across.
Small portions of the sieved sample later will be delivered through inlet ports on top of the rover deck into the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. ”
Planet Mercury in amazing color showing rock compositions
NASA has been capturing images of the solar systems smallest planet Mercury for 2 years with its Messenger spacecraft, and has been collecting high resolution color images of the planet. Now the visual data has been stitched together to make a 3D model of the Mercury.
“The areas that you see that are orange - those are volcanic plains. There are some areas that are deep blue that are richer in an opaque mineral which is somewhat mysterious - we don’t really know what that is yet. “And then you see beautiful light-blue streaks across Mercury’s surface. Those are crater rays formed in impacts when fresh, ground-up rock is strewn across the surface of the planet.”
made transparent
I love Mercury immensely. Learn more about this image & see the full video here.
Acoustic Levitation
Using sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing pharmaceutical drugs and drying them in mid-air. Why do this? This is useful because most of the drugs on the market are either amorphous or crystalline and the crystalline form doesn’t get absorbed by the body. So levitating the solution allows the drug to be made into an amorphous state (by evaporation) because if it were to touch any surface it would simply crystallize. They call this “containerless processing”.
The frequencies used are just above the audible range at about 22 kilohertz and when the two speakers are aligned they create two sets of sound waves, perfectly interfering with each other creating a phenomenon known as a standing wave. This allows the objects to levitate in areas within the waves known as nodes as the acoustic pressure is enough to cancel the force of gravity.
(via the-science-llama)
