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This ones ForePlay like it :) better yet use it

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Love it when u ask politely.

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Dylan Terry, founder of Ready-to-Grow Gardens is a New College of Florida Alumnus. He’s always been interested in nature and food, but his passion really took root when he attended college and revitalized the NCF campus garden.

Working with faculty and managing student peers, Dylan brought the once dilapidated garden back to life. After graduation he interned at the Knight foundation, where he was exposed to the evolving food movement happening in Miami. From then he was hooked. A couple years later after working as a graphic designer he had a revelation - he didn’t want to spend the majority of his day inside looking at computer screens. His life had many turns in the arts and design, but aligned the best in horticulture.

Ready-to-Grow was founded on Dylan’s vision to integrate love of plants with love of people and cities.

OCT: What is an opportunity we have in Miami?

Dylan Terry: I think there are a lot of things that Miami has going for it. There’s a lot of problems, but there are a lot of good things. It’s an incredibly rich culture, the weather is very unique and enjoyable for most of the year, and it’s always going to be home for me, since I’ve lived here all my life.

I think Miami can evolve in a lot of cool ways and I think there is a growing consciousness towards new ideas and new ways of living.

People are putting their minds to it and making positive things happen.

Our City Thoughts: What are your most important goals for the next year?

DT: One of the main missions we have is to figure out how to be very functional and productive while also creating really beautiful landscapes. We have done it with community gardens setting up individual plots, and on the sides of office’s between the sidewalk and even on the walls of buildings. It’s all edible landscaping.

We also want to focus on creating more projects in public spaces and gardens for the community - making people more aware while sharing information on what’s the best way to get the culture moving. We’re always trying to be better at what we do and be better gardeners, as well as helping people.

OCT: What community issues keep you up at night?

DT: People not having access to healthy food keeps me up. Either they can’t afford it, or they don’t know how to grow it, or have no one helping them to do so.

I think urban agriculture is a huge part of the solution. I want it to be easier for people to use vacant lots to grow food if they’re not being used for anything.

By having a system where it’s easy for people to come and say “hey, nobody is using this land. Can I use it for a while and I’ll pay the water bill?” It’s a dream I have in terms of it being easier for people to get healthy food.

OCT: Describe your ideal city?

DT: The big thing I focus on is the integration of nature and landscape. I want more park spaces, more community gardens and more natural areas. Spaces that bring people outside, besides the beach. I think that the way cities are traditionally constructed isolate us from our history of being hunter gatherers or even farmers.

Having parks where we’re able to go and gather food would connect us to where we came from. There are ways to do it, it’s not easy but possible.

Dylan is also a columnist for Edible South Florida giving advice on gardening and growing. Check out Ready-to-Grow Gardens to learn more about the way to create your green space, learn more about edible gardens, and healthy living.

— Josh Fay

[geo-soul]

Awesome

Towards a Minimal Cell A Gallery of Giant Liposomes  by Jorge Bernardino de la Serna University of Southern Denmark

One of the most ambitious endeavors of synthetic biology is creating “minimal cells” that fully recapitulate the functions of a natural cell—they capture energy, maintain ion gradients, store information, and mutate.

Although such technologies are still far on the horizon, researchers have made great progress in creating “semi-synthetic cells” that can mimic specific cellular tasks, such as protein production and synthesis of lipid membranes.

Many of these artificial cells reside inside liposomes, artificial vesicles each comprised of a lipid bilayer.

Technical Details Each micrograph shows a giant liposome ~20-50µm in diameter comprised of fats and proteins from the surface of the mammalian lung alveoli without any chemical treatment. The liposomes are directly isolated from a lung lavage.

Each micrograph was acquired at a different temperature or has varying composition of native fats and proteins.

Images obtained with a Laser Scanning Confocal inverted microscope with either conventional fluorescent excitation or two-photon excitation.

Source: Cell

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Can't believe we are at this point. Apparently no one in Congress attended the seminar in pre-k about playing well with others. #americangovernment

[geo-soul]

No one wants to be the person who is made fun of for caring too much about something, who treats in earnest a situation that everyone else considers absurd. Even in personal relationships, feeling too heavily invested while simultaneously understanding that the other person couldn’t be more detached is one of the most profound feelings of embarrassment we can experience. Because it isn’t simply the embarrassment of making a mistake or a poor choice, it’s a shame over the kind of human being you are and how you see the world around you. To be shamed for your sincerity is to be reminded that you are dependent on something which is not dependent on you — that you are, once again, vulnerable.

I Will Always Care Too Much (via alchemy)

Been there

[geo-soul]

I Bow To You

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Lol

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To Feed the Future, Mine the Wealth of the World’s Seed Banks Today

With fewer than a dozen flowering plants out of 300,000 species accounting for 80 percent of humanity’s caloric intake, people need to tap unused plants to feed the world in the near future, claims Cornell University plant geneticist Susan McCouch in the Comment feature of the July 4 issue of Nature.

To keep pace with population growth and rising incomes around the world, researchers estimate that food availability must double in the next 25 years. The biodiversity stored in plant gene banks coupled with advances in genetics and plant breeding may hold the keys for meeting the demands of more food in the face of climate change, soil degradation and water and land shortages, according to the paper.

“Gene banks hold hundreds of thousands of seeds and tissue culture materials collected from farmer’s fields and from wild, ancestral populations, providing the raw material that plant breeders need to create crops of the future,” said McCouch.

For example, after screening more than 6,000 varieties from seed banks, plant breeders identified and crossbred a single wild species of rice, Oryza nivara; the result is a variety that has protected against grassy stunt virus disease in almost all tropical rice varieties in Asia for the past 36 years, the paper states.

Similarly, by 1997, the value of using crop wild relatives as sources of environmental resilience and resistance to pests and diseases led to an estimated $115 billion in annual benefits to the world economy. Though seeds are readily accessible in 1,700 gene banks throughout the world, “they are not used to their full potential in plant breeding,” McCouch said.

At present, it is difficult for breeders to make use of the wealth of genetic material in seed banks because of a lack of information about the genes in most plants and the traits they confer, she said. Due to the time and effort required to identify and then use wild and unadapted genetic resources, “a breeder must have a good idea about the genetic value of an uncharacterized resource before attempting to use it in a breeding program,” McCouch said.

In the paper, McCouch and colleagues outlined a three-point plan to address these constraints:

A massive genetic sequencing effort on seed-bank holdings to document what exists in the collections, to strategically target experiments to evaluate what traits a plant has (called phenotyping) and to begin to predict plant performance.

A broad phenotyping initiative, not only of the gene bank holdings, but also of the progeny generated from crossing wild and exotic materials to adapted varieties targeted for local use.

An internationally accessible informatics infrastructure to coordinate data that are currently managed independently by gene-bank curators, agronomists and breeders.

The estimated cost for such a systematic, collaborative global effort to help characterize the genetic resources needed to feed the future is about $200 million annually, according to McCouch.

“This seems like great value, given that as a society we spend about $1 billion each year to run CERN’s Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, and up to $180 million on a single fighter jet,” said McCouch.

Media Notes: • A full copy of McCouch’s paper can be found here. • A Nature Podcast interview with McCouch is available here.

Source: newswise.com

Image: [x]

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!

There will be blood

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A LETTER TO MY DOG, EXPLORING THE HUMAN CONDITION Dear squash Aka squashy Aka squishy Aka squasharooni Gibson Aka squish squash and you don’t stop Aka miracle button Aka little perfect peanut Aka my beating heart with fur and legs I know you think it’s insane that I still poop in the house That I choose to wear underwear and pants giving no one the opportunity to smell my true disposition That on the days I need to feel better about myself I don’t just pee on someone’s pee Don’t worry. I am not fooled by my thumbs I know I am not the tadpole’s final project I know I am not the last species evolution hopes to become I can’t even swallow my own pride long enough to let myself drool when something smells delicious What must you think of my mirror face Or how much of my day I spend practicing my butch voice My baby-I’ll-fix-your-carburetor-with-my-tool-kit voice when you know full well there is nothing in my tool kit besides a massive collection of self help books that have helped me do nothing but feng shui the skeletons in my closet Don’t you just love how that femur accents the sofa set, squash I’m sorry I cry every time I take you to the vet I’m sorry they take your temperature like that I’m sorry I take you there when you’ve only got a bug bite Humans hold so tight to the leash of life but you will roll in anything dead and wear it like perfume I wish I had your nose for eternity I wish I could see what you see Where the squirrels satan your eyes Where the postman deserves to die even when he’s not bringing bills What’s with hating the shadow the peace lily makes on the floor in the living room? I know I let you down everyday I choose not to murder the vacuum Is it bad that I refuse to teach you to not be afraid of men Is it bad that I want you to keep your bite and your snarl and your gleaming teeth Is it bad that when they call you a risk, I call you a feminist You never make fun of your friend Chloe’s underbite Or your friend willow’s limp Or your friend Harvey’s past trouble with the law You never criticize me for being too uptight to let my hair down even though you can let yours all the way out All over my black hoody, my black pants, the couch, the car, the chair, the online merch store that sells my books and tee-shirts wrote me a letter saying “we can’t continue to sell your products if they continue to be covered in so much of your dog’s hair" I just assumed anything covered in you would increase in value Remember when I told that woman I loved her and whispered in your ear “you’re my number one girl" it’s true If I could I would put your beating heart in my mouth and suck on it like a piece of candy so I could finally understand how you got so sweet I know my therapist likes you more than she likes me And I still let you sleep on her couch You taught me a good nap is the best therapy You taught me to sit when I damn well want to sit I don’t care that you never talk about capitalism or patriarchy or the heteronormative hegemonic paradigm I know you’re saving the world every time you get poo stuck in your butt hair and you don’t go looking for someone to blame Speaking of looking for someone I can’t imagine what you think of sex I can’t tell if you think it’s a slobbering badly boundaried belly rub or a poorly aimed fist fight You just perch on the end of the bed and tilt your head back and forth Wondering why I still haven’t taken my pants off I have issues, Squash Humans have issues We dig holes to bury our own hearts We chew on our own bones We escape the predators but still can’t shake them off Some of us wear our own bodies the way your friend Berlin wore that cone around her head, remember? So embarrassed, but I never had a better teacher that came to my own spirit than you Never had a reason to stop playing dead until the day I saw your little face at the shelter Your little nose pressed against the cold glass, staring up at me like I was a gay Noah’s ark My heart My heart My heart Every time I give you a treat, you run around the house looking for a place to hide it until you finally come to where I am sitting and hide it directly under me The most important thing I have ever built in my whole life is your trust May you always feel entitled to more than your fair share of the bed May you always tear the stuffing out of every toy I give you So I can constantly be reminded to keep spilling my guts To keep saying I don’t know how I will ever make peace with the shortness of your life span But I promise to make sure you know you are so loved every second you are here You know my hands will build the sturdiest ark they possibly can To hold your holy howl and your holy bark and your holy beg Squasharooni Gibson My little perfect peanut My beating heart with fur and legs

Andrea Gibson “A Letter to My Dog, Exploring the Human Condition" (via ohandreagibson)

Amazing

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Tat

(James Roper)

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Let go or be dragged.

Zen Proverb (via perfect)

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Namaste

A poem about androgyny in people / genderqueer people.

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Damn Your Eyes

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awesome

THE HUMAN MATING CALL

Are good dancers more likely to ‘get some’? It turns out that our dance clubs aren’t so different from the local watering hole for animals, and in fact, dancing may act as a human mating call!