Dorian's Ennui

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We used to think that breast milk was just a food and that it was filled with fats and proteins and vitamins and that formula companies were successfully able to mimic this. But we now know that there are substances in breast milk that exist almost at the same levels that are not digestible by infants. So what are they doing there? It turns out, they’re digestible by beneficial bacteria. So over millions of years, the mother has been creating a substance that will recruit useful bacteria into her infant’s gut and this sets her infant up for life. So as much as breast milk is a food, we also now understand that it’s also a medicine.

Florence Williams on the benefits of breast milk (via nprfreshair)

(Reblogged from nprfreshair)

npr:

Ooooo.
jtotheizzoe:

Genetics of the Beautiful “Glass Gem” Corn
Corn gone viral? You’re looking at an ear of a corn variety called “Glass Gem”, grown by Greg Schoen of Seeds Trust. This is real corn! How does it grow this way?
First you have to understand a few things about corn. Each corn kernel is actually a sort of unique plant. A corn plant’s male parts (the “tassels”) sit at the top of the stalk, and drop pollen downward. Unfertilized ears (the female parts) catch the pollen with the sticky ends of their corn silks. Each corn silk (I hate when that gets in my teeth) grabs a pollen grain, shuttles it allllllll the way down inside the ear, eventually creating one kernel for each pollen-silk-ovum combination. It’s one of the more interesting and inefficient breeding schemes I know of.
If you’ve taken genetics, you know that the parents’ genes will combine by chance, leading to certain ratios of inheritance in the offspring. This is the basis of Mendelian genetics (great Khan Academy video here).
With corn, we’ve simply carefully bred all the interestingness out of them. Native Americans were used to multi-colored corn, because corn plants held many varieties of color genes that could combine at random. Now all we are left with are one-color clones.
This “Glass Gem” corn is the other extreme of the spectrum, a combination of corn color hybrid genes and random pollination. It’s almost too pretty to eat!
(via Discover Magazine)

View high resolution

npr:

Ooooo.

jtotheizzoe:

Genetics of the Beautiful “Glass Gem” Corn

Corn gone viral? You’re looking at an ear of a corn variety called “Glass Gem”, grown by Greg Schoen of Seeds Trust. This is real corn! How does it grow this way?

First you have to understand a few things about corn. Each corn kernel is actually a sort of unique plant. A corn plant’s male parts (the “tassels”) sit at the top of the stalk, and drop pollen downward. Unfertilized ears (the female parts) catch the pollen with the sticky ends of their corn silks. Each corn silk (I hate when that gets in my teeth) grabs a pollen grain, shuttles it allllllll the way down inside the ear, eventually creating one kernel for each pollen-silk-ovum combination. It’s one of the more interesting and inefficient breeding schemes I know of.

If you’ve taken genetics, you know that the parents’ genes will combine by chance, leading to certain ratios of inheritance in the offspring. This is the basis of Mendelian genetics (great Khan Academy video here).

With corn, we’ve simply carefully bred all the interestingness out of them. Native Americans were used to multi-colored corn, because corn plants held many varieties of color genes that could combine at random. Now all we are left with are one-color clones.

This “Glass Gem” corn is the other extreme of the spectrum, a combination of corn color hybrid genes and random pollination. It’s almost too pretty to eat!

(via Discover Magazine)

(Reblogged from npr)

May 15

(Source: weloveindia)

(Reblogged from mountainofgod)

shychemist:

jtotheizzoe:

Watch the world’s most awesome Rube Goldberg ‘kinetic sculpture’

London’s Science Museum installed this, the most elaborate Rube Goldberg machine I’ve ever seen, as an illustration of the concept of energy transfer. It ran for one day, and one day only.

No soft toys were injured in the making of this film, which will blow your mind.

(via guardian.co.uk)

WOW! I am impressed!

(Reblogged from anengineersaspect)

jtotheizzoe:

divineirony:

Richard Feynman - on scientific method

Feynman really shines in this all-time classic video.

Of course, this is a must-watch video for many obvious reasons. There’s the genius, charm and humor of Richard Feynman. There’s that pleasant nostalgia of 1964 America when the world was black-and-white, although it was unfortunately that way in more ways than one. These were the days when lecture halls had ashtrays and you wore a suit when you went to see someone write on a chalkboard.

But there’s another, less obvious, reason to watch it. During a passage starting at 5:10, Feynman might have uttered the word “muggles” for the first time. He pronounces it a bit oddly, but it would explain his wizardry of physics, no?

(Reblogged from jtotheizzoe)

jtotheizzoe:

genannetics:

Five Fingers of Evolution (by TEDEducation)

Having trouble remembering the 5 processes that impact evolution (small population, non-random mating, mutations, gene flow, adaptation)? Learn the five-finger trick, and you’ll always have them at your fingertips (see what I did there?)!

TEDEducation is knocking out of the park, which is pretty much exactly what I expected they would do. Maybe they’re juicing?. We should have them tested.

Put some smiles on those genes, turn them into jeans, and get shufflin’ … you’ll have the principles of natural selection down in no time.

Previously: TEDEd on How Small Is An Atom? And don’t miss their jaw-dropping visual journey The Secret Life of Plankton.

(Reblogged from jtotheizzoe)

View high resolution

fuckyeahbrutalism:

Secondary School, Morbio Inferiore, Switzerland, 1972-76

(Mario Botta)

Brutalist architecture

(Reblogged from fuckyeahbrutalism)

cosmicatlas:

Just an elephant saying goodbye

(Reblogged from cosmicatlas)

So it’s not official with the university yet but I told my parents that I was switching out of engineering into the natural sciences college because I suck at engineering & I have absolutely zero enthusiasm for it.

=/

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It’s a uniquely American prudishness. You can write the most detailed, vivid description of an ax entering a skull, and nobody will say a word in protest. But if you write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, you get letters from people saying they’ll never read you again. What the hell? Penises entering vaginas bring a lot more joy into the world than axes entering skulls.

Author George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire.) Interview published in May 2012 Rolling Stones Magazine. (via sweetupndown9)

(Reblogged from historicalslut)