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I’ve seen a few ~aesthetic~ photos of rock stacks in rivers recently and this is just a reminder that you are destroying habitat when you move rocks around in rivers and streams.

In addition to dragonfly nymphs, rocky river beds are home to lots of other larval invertebrates like damselflies, mayflies, water beetles, caddisflies, stoneflies, and a bunch of dipterans. Not to mention lots of fish and amphibians!

Plus large scale rock stacking can change the flow of a stream and lead to increased erosion.

Anyway dragonfly for admiration:

Calico pennant by nbdragonflyguy

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Our Roman Space Telescope’s Dish is Complete!

NASA engineers recently completed tests of the high-gain antenna for our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This observatory has some truly stellar plans once it launches by May 2027. Roman will help unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter – two invisible components that helped shape our universe and may determine its ultimate fate. The mission will also search for and image planets outside our solar system and explore all kinds of other cosmic topics.

However, it wouldn’t be able to send any of the data it will gather back to Earth without its antenna. Pictured above in a test chamber, this dish will provide the primary communication link between the Roman spacecraft and the ground. It will downlink the highest data volume of any NASA astrophysics mission so far.

The antenna reflector is made of a carbon composite material that weighs very little but will still withstand wide temperature fluctuations. It’s very hot and cold in space – Roman will experience a temperature range of minus 26 to 284 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 32 to 140 degrees Celsius)!

The dish spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter, standing about as tall as a refrigerator, yet only weighs 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms) – about as much as a dachshund. Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth.

At one frequency, the dual-band antenna will receive commands and send back information about the spacecraft’s health and location. It will use another frequency to transmit a flood of data at up to 500 megabits per second to ground stations on Earth. The dish is designed to point extremely accurately at Earth, all while both Earth and the spacecraft are moving through space.

Engineers tested the antenna to make sure it will withstand the spacecraft’s launch and operate as expected in the extreme environment of space. The team also measured the antenna’s performance in a radio-frequency anechoic test chamber. Every surface in the test chamber is covered in pyramidal foam pieces that minimize interfering reflections during testing. Next, the team will attach the antenna to the articulating boom assembly, and then electrically integrate it with Roman’s Radio Frequency Communications System.

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

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i often think about that deep diving expedition where a toad was caught on camera at the bottom of loch ness

i wonder how he’s doing

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The landscape is your eyes.

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A protein extracted from squid may help increase tissue growth for regenerative medicine

Collagen is the basic protein that makes up the intercellular matrix, or in other words, the environment for the connective tissue cells of our body, such as tendons, bone, and cartilage. It looks like long threads, woven into three-dimensional networks. This, in turn, creates a kind of a tissue scaffold.

Due to the fact that collagen fibers are durable, elastic, and also serve as signals that determine the cell’s so-called destiny, in medicine they are used as an environment to accelerate growth and differentiation of tissues, for example in wound healing. Most often such materials are artificially synthesized from collagen dissolution. However, even the most advanced technologies are unable to create collagen “networks” that exactly repeat the structure of a natural cellular environment, most favorable for its regeneration, or in other words, tissue repair.

Scientists from Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (Kaliningrad) with their colleagues from Voronezh State University (Voronezh) have proposed to use natural collagen extracted from Dosidicus gigas squid as tissue scaffold for growing cells instead of artificially synthesized collagen.

Read more.

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Wake up babe new aperiodic tiling dropped

Aperiodic tiling with only one tile!

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Samuel J. Palmer - http://sjpalmer.art/

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So Putin and the Russians are putting tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. What do you think Putin is trying to do here?

Personally I think he's trying to dissuade anymore NATO support after all the other "red lines" were crossed and he's hoping this works. I don't think he'd use them though.

Frankly, I think he's trying to do it to show strength and attempt to intimidate the West into slowing or stopping Ukrainian aid, especially in not giving Ukraine better systems. The whole "depleted uranium represents a nuclear escalation of the conflict" line that Russia has been giving in response to the UK providing depleted uranium anti-tank rounds to Ukraine is a lie for two reasons.

First, depleted uranium is, as the name might imply, depleted. The amount of depleted uranium dust you'd need to inhale just to reach the level of radioactivity you'd get from a chest X-ray or several high altitude flights would be so high you'd have to be doing rails of DU dust off the husk of a burned out T-72. You'd need to actually ingest significant quantities of DU to increase your radiation risk to a measurable degree.

The second is that Russia has already been using depleted uranium rounds in the T-80, so there's no escalation given that they've already been used. Of course, Russian statements and a quarter are worth 25 cents, so I don't put a lot of stock in it. The chance Russia uses nuclear weapons at this point are as close to zero as you can be without the ability to actually read Putin's mind and confirming it for yourself. He won't use them, not just because he'd start World War III, but because in all likelihood, someone would attempt to coup him since they don't have a bunker to retreat to. You'd have to see a serious collapse of the Russian lines and the Ukranians moving to take either Crimea or Belgorod before that even becomes a possibility.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

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According to an article from Interesting Engineering, a robot made of LEGOs can produce DNA machines. Here’s an excerpt:

A team of ingenious bioengineers at Arizona State University (ASU) has harnessed the power of childhood nostalgia, unveiling a creative solution to a long-standing challenge in DNA origami research.

They've successfully employed a LEGO robotics kit to build an affordable, highly effective gradient mixer for purifying self-assembling DNA origami nanostructures. This innovative breakthrough, detailed in a paper published one PLOS ONE, promises to revolutionize how scientists approach DNA origami synthesis.

The creation of DNA origami structures is an intricate process, requiring precise purification of nanostructures. Traditionally, this purification step involved rate-zone centrifugation, relying on a costly piece of equipment called a gradient mixer. However, the maverick minds at ASU have demonstrated that even the iconic plastic bricks of LEGO can be repurposed for scientific advancement.

So if DNA is found in every living thing, and this robot is making these DNA “machines”. Does that mean the robot is creating life?

The full article will be below.

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"Typical crystals." Chemistry of common things. c.1914.

Internet Archive

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Tatiana Erukhimova is a national treasure.

Source

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“Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, ‘we need higher standards.’ The schools say, ‘we need more money and equipment.’ Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong.

The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, ‘math class is stupid and boring,’ and they are right.“

-Paul Lockhart, A Mathematician's Lament

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It will never make sense

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There’s a lot of excellent examples of the difference between a million and a billion, but here’s my new personal favorite from a conversation I had today:

A million minutes ago was April 2021, the height of the COVID pandemic.

A billion minutes ago was November 121 CE, the height of the Roman Empire.

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I spit out my drink lmao