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From the Wikipedia page about the Fermi Paradox: Given the high scientific probability for alien existence, why can we find no evidence of their existence whatsoever?

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Seriously, where is it? Comic by www.sarahcandersen.com

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Study reveals cannabis users age faster

A study carried out by researchers from The University of Western Australia has found significant detrimental effects to the vascular system from smoking cannabis, including early ageing. The study discovered that long-term use of cannabis increased the biological age of those studied by 11 per cent, due to the impact of the hardening of arteries in those who used the drug. For example, a 30-year-old person would have a biological age of around 33 years old. It is well established that cannabis use has toxic effects on the brain, lungs, respiratory system and many parts of the reproductive system, and has been linked to a variety of cancers.  However this is the first study to show that varied toxic effects are not just related to malfunction of organs, but are related to an acceleration of the ageing process.

The study has been published in the British Medical Journal Open.

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Bear Proofing Your Campsite. ⛺️🐻

Many people are scared to camp in areas with bears, although most bears avoid people. Your risk of being hurt by a bear is lower than your risk of being struck by lightning and much lower than your risk of being hurt in a car accident as you drive to bear country.

Bears that are aggressive are usually caused by human harassment or disregard for proper food and trash storage at camp. Bears that behave in this way are usually killed by bear wildlife managers. Many bear species have become endangered, which could be avoided with planning and precaution around camp.

The goal of bear-proofing your camp is to minimize odors that might attract bears, and to set up safe storage areas for food and garbage that are out of reach of bears and are away from your sleeping area. The best way to do this is to start with a camp set up that facilitates these goals.

In his book “Safe Travel in Bear Country,” Gary Brown describes a basic camp set up where the sleeping area is upwind of the kitchen and food storage areas and at least 200 feet apart.

Bear pepper spay has proven very effective at repelling approaching or aggressive bears and reducing the incidence of human injury. In fact, it is even more effective than a firearm in preventing injury. Statistics show that people defending themselves with guns were injured about 50% of the time while people using bear spray usually escaped injury.

More info: https://www.princeton.edu/~oa/training/bearbag.shtml

http://www.grizzlydiscoveryctr.org/education/bear-awareness-hiking-camping/

#Survival #Bushcraft #Bear #Bears #BearCountry #BearSpray #BearCanister #Food #Safety #Camping #Hiking #Backpacking

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Puffer Fish Amigurumi - A Free Pattern

Holy hell! YES! This little guy is the best! cut out and keep shares a free pattern. Must make one right NOW!

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Bone Cross Section by Alexey Kashpersky for Radius Digital Science

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The Lucky One (2012) 

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Henri Matisse’s studio, 1952

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This Star Trek-like Tricorder Can tell You Exactly What Things Are Made of:

This is the first-ever handheld, universal molecular scanner. Now, you don’t need tech the size of a lab in order to tell what the things you encounter are made of: http://futurism.com/videos/star-trek-like-tricorder-tells-exactly-whats-food/

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CONCEPT ZERO Ferrofluid Display

Though the technical description of ferrofluid is “a stable colloidal suspension of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles,” we prefer to stick with “magnetic magic in a bottle.”

Usually confined to scientific demonstrations, in the presence of a magnetic field ferrofluid essentially goes nuts—shifting into spiky three-dimensional shapes, bouncing from one magnetic pole to the other, and being generally fascinating in every way.

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Grading the inaccuracies of my student’s chemical structures

And here is a selection of what some undergraduates managed to produce:

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Virus-inspired delivery system transfers microscopic cargo between human cells

Scientists from the University of Utah and University of Washington have developed blueprints that instruct human cells to assemble a virus-like delivery system that can transport custom cargo from one cell to another. As reported online in Nature on Nov. 30, the research is a step toward a nature-inspired means for delivering therapeutics directly to specific cell types within the body.

“We’re shifting our perception from viruses as pathogens, to viruses as inspiration for new tools,” says Wesley Sundquist, Ph.D., co-chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He is also co-senior author on the study with Neil King, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington.

Jörg Votteler, Cassandra Ogohara, Sue Yi, Yang Hsia, Una Nattermann, David M. Belnap, Neil P. King, Wesley I. Sundquist. Designed proteins induce the formation of nanocage-containing extracellular vesicles. Nature, 2016; DOI: 10.1038/nature20607

Scientists at the University of Utah and University of Washington have designed a self-assembling, biologically-based system that can deliver custom cargo between human cells. Cargo is encased in protein nanocages (yellow, enlarged on left) that are carried from one cell to another within vesicles built from membranes (green, shown in cross-section). Each vesicle can hold multiple cargo-carrying nanocages.        Credit: David Belnap, Jörg Votteler

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Are you an affable amoeba? An earnest euglena? Find out your inner protist for 2017!

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My favorite thing from this year: playing with the glowstick reaction using TCPO (bis(2,4,6-trichlorophenyl) oxalate).

The glow stick contains two chemicals and a suitable dye. One of the chemicals is a diaryl oxalate (in this case TCPO, or bis(2,4,6-trichlorophenyl) oxalate), the other one is an oxidizer, usually hydrogen peroxide. By mixing the peroxide with the oxalate ester, a chemical reaction takes place, releasing energy that excites the dye, which then relaxes by releasing a photon, emitting light. The color of the emitted light depends on the structure of the dye.

Using Nile Red:

Mixing it with Perylene:

During this reaction I used two type of dyes, on of them was Nile Red, what is a quite special, solvatofluorescent dye and Perylene what is a polyaromatic hydrocarbon. When used in pure form the perylene emits a bright blue light, but when its combined with Nile Red, it emits this nice pinkish-purple as seen on the gifs above and on the video.

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Why we need GMOs to survive climate change

Genetically modified organisms get a bad rap for many reasons, but we’ve actually been genetically altering what we eat since the dawn of human history.

“For 10,000 years, we have altered the genetic makeup of our crops,”explains UC Davis plant pathology professor Pamela Ronald.

“Today virtually everything we eat is produced from seeds that we have genetically altered in one way or another.” (You can read more about Ronald’s thoughts on genetically engineered food here.)

Right now her focus is on rice. It’s one of our basic crops and without it, we would struggle to feed much of the world.

With climate change, we’re seeing an increase in flooding in places like India and Bangladesh, which makes it harder to grow this important food staple.

So Ronald and her lab have developed a flood-tolerant strain of rice. It’s known as Sub1a or “scuba rice” and millions of farmers in South Asia are now growing it in their fields. 

Today is National Food Day, a day dedicated to hunger awareness. But as we focus on food insecurity, we need to talk more about how global warming will make the problem worse.

As our climate continues to heat up, it has huge impacts on what foods we are able to grow. Will our crops be able to survive droughts and floods? The University of California leads six labs that are working to develop other climate-resilient crops including chickpea, cowpea and millet.

Find out what other scientists are doing to improve our food.

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Minowa Chieko