Luke.stirling

Last day to buy!

parkingstrange:

Researchers at the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics led by professor Chunlei Guo have developed a new type of hydrophobic surface that is so highly water repellant, it causes water droplets to bounce off like magic. Unlike earlier hydrophobic surfaces that rely on temporary (and slowly degrading) chemical coatings such as teflon, this new super-hydrophobic surface is created by etching microscopic structures into metal with the help of lasers. Potential applications include airplane wings that resist icing, a whole new type of rust proofing, or even a toilet that wouldn’t require water. Watch the video above to see the surface in action, and you can read Guo’s research paper here. (via Sploid)

beakybirds:

Meet Groovy! A bird that myself and my boyfriend (ryanthecreator) adore, that’s for rehome at capecodparrots via parrot-dise!

*jumps excitedly*

Ever since my childhood in the Upper Midwest, I've understood that one of the factors leading to the great "Dust Bowl" disaster of the 1930s was the destruction of the native grasslands by farmers.  But it takes an image to really drive it home - such as the one above comparing the root systems of a perennial wheatgrass with those of modern annual winter wheat.  A National Geographic article explains that humans have always favored annuals over perennials because the short lifespans promote selective breeding:

Humans made an unwitting but fateful choice 10,000 years ago as we started cultivating wild plants: We chose annuals. All the grains that feed billions of people today—wheat, rice, corn, and so on—come from annual plants, which sprout from seeds, produce new seeds, and die every year. "The whole world is mostly perennials," says USDA geneticist Edward Buckler, who studies corn at Cornell University. "So why did we domesticate annuals?" Not because annuals were better, he says, but because Neolithic farmers rapidly made them better—enlarging their seeds, for instance, by replanting the ones from thriving plants, year after year. Perennials didn't benefit from that kind of selective breeding, because they don't need to be replanted. Their natural advantage became a handicap. They became the road not taken.

We pay a steep price for our reliance on high yields and shallow roots, says soil scientist—and National Geographic emerging explorer—Jerry Glover of the Land Institute. Because annual root crops mostly tap into only the top foot or so of soil, that layer gets depleted, forcing farmers to rely on large amounts of fertilizers to maintain high yields. Often less than half the fertilizer in the Midwest gets taken up by crops; much of it washes into the Gulf of Mexico, where it fertilizes algae blooms that cause a vast dead zone around the mouth of the Mississippi. Annuals also promote heavy use of pesticides or tillage because they leave the ground bare much of the year. That allows weeds to invade.

The article goes on to explain that scientists are aggressively pursuing the concept of creating deep-rooted perennials that can serve as food plants.  This topic was considered in greater depth in Discover Magazine last spring:

Now we also have much better tools in plant breeding. We have much more powerful, faster computers that allow us to sift through the genetic material to determine which characteristics are going to be more productive...

I recommend focusing first on the perennial types of legumes, given the protein needs of many of the developing countries. The great benefit is that legumes contribute to cropping systems; they can help take nitrogen out of the atmosphere and make it available in the soil.

African soils were in general less fertile and less well-suited for agricultural production than American soils from the beginning. Farmers in Africa are often faced by the big challenge of working with inherently old, highly weathered soil...  I think ultimately they could be more productive than our annual grain crops because they are able to capture more sunlight, water and nutrients. But the urgency in developed countries isn’t there.

Excerpts from Complexities of Choosing an End Game for Dementia:

Mr. Medalie’s directive also specifies something more unusual: If he develops Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia, he refuses “ordinary means of nutrition and hydration.” 

A retired lawyer with a proclivity for precision, he has listed 10 triggering conditions, including “I cannot recognize my loved ones” and “I cannot articulate coherent thoughts and sentences.”

If any three such disabilities persist for several weeks, he wants his health care proxy — his wife, Beth Lowd — to ensure that nobody tries to keep him alive by spoon-feeding or offering him liquids. VSED, short for “voluntarily stopping eating and drinking,” is not unheard-of as an end-of-life strategy, typically used by older adults who hope to hasten their decline from terminal conditions. But now ethicists, lawyers and older adults themselves have begun a quiet debate about whether people who develop dementia can use VSED to end their lives by including such instructions in an advance directive...

Even in the few states where physicians can legally prescribe lethal medication for the terminally ill, laws require that patients be mentally competent and able to ingest those drugs themselves. Mr. Medalie would prefer that option if he were to become demented, preferably with the barbiturates dissolved in “a little vodka.”

But demented patients don’t qualify for so-called death with dignity. VSED is a lawful way to hasten death for competent adults who find life with a progressive, irreversible disease unendurable...

“Neglecting basic human comfort care is a big source of elder abuse complaints and criminal prosecutions.” And if a patient demands that his basic care be withheld in the event of dementia? “Nobody from a legal perspective has really meaningfully grappled with that,” he said.

In several states, including New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota and New Hampshire, legislatures have banned the withdrawal of oral nutrition or hydration at all, no matter what a directive or a proxy says.

More at the link.  Worth a read for those dealing with a family member with dementia.

A few years back, Mark introduced me to The Fruit Hunters, a book about "exotic fruits and the obsessives that hunt them." I read the book, and as if infected with some Lovecraftian curse, I am now a Fruit Hunter, too. Read the rest

"I recently captured this footage of blue whales from my paddle board with my GoPro," says Rich German. Read the rest

Постапокалиптика Yuri Shwedoff

toma-29:

your lunch is ready! :D

mother has packed your lunch, sweetie.

deep-dark-fears:

Happy holidays! An anonymous fear submitted to deep dark fears. Just trying to draw like Helen Jo today.

By comedian Brent Weinbach.

(more…)

I was a graduate student in Eugene, Oregon, and I liked it. It’s a very liberal town, as is Portland, and we were only vaguely aware that the surrounding areas were extremely conservative. We also knew that there were areas to the south in particular that were flamingly racist and homophobic, and reading David Brin’s novel, The Postman, set in a future Oregon, it was completely unsurprising to have the antagonist be basically a white supremacist from down around the Rogue River. But that wasn’t us!

We were also vaguely aware that it was a very white population. After living in Philadelphia and even Salt Lake City, it’s become strangely obvious how radically white everyone was. We didn’t realize why, and no one talked about it (I hung out with university liberals, you know) but as I like to say, everything is the way it is because of how it got that way, and Oregon’s ugly history shaped its modern population, no matter how progressive they may be now.

Oregon was founded as a whites-only state.

According to Oregon’s founding constitution, black people were not permitted to live in the state. And that held true until 1926. The small number of black people already living in the state in 1859, when it was admitted to the Union, were sometimes allowed to stay, but the next century of segregation and terrorism at the hands of angry racists made it clear that they were not welcome.

Oregon was admitted to the union as a free state, but I get the impression they were against slavery only because it would require allowing inferior people to live there. In the 19th century, they had a law that black people would be flogged every six months until they left the state. In a fit of post-war ebullience, they ratified the 14th amendment in 1866, giving black people citizenship, but they rescinded their vote in 1868, after more soberly racist heads came to power, and only re-ratified it in 1973.

Portland stores didn’t server “Negroes, Jews, or dogs” in the 1950s, and public facilities were segregated until the 1960s…it was the kind of open racism we usually associate with the deep South. The difference in Oregon was that most of the black people had been driven out, so there was no one left to notice or complain, except, of course, for a comfortable sea of lily-white Oregonians.

I lived there for 9 years. It’s rather embarrassing to learn all this now, so many years later.

We left Oregon before any of our kids were old enough to attend public schools, but I wonder now whether this shameful history is ever mentioned to the kids there. Any Oregonians want to tell us?

Last week, NASA and NOAA announced that 2014 was the hottest year in Earth's recorded history . This animation by Bloomberg brings that finding into sharp focus.

Read more...

The demi-god, the genius billionaire playboy philanthropist & the super-soldier – who are you most excited to see in #AvengersAgeOfUltron? — Marvel Canada (@MarvelEntCA) January 19, 2015

Last night, Marvel Entertainment Canada asked the internet who they’re most excited to see in Avengers: Age of Ultron: Thor, Iron Man, or Cap? Let’s see what the Twitterverse had to say:

@MarvelEntCA Black Widow. — Chandri MacLeod (@chandri) January 19, 2015

.@MarvelEntCA Black Widow. — Ann Lemay (@annlemay) January 19, 2015

@MarvelEntCA Black Widow. — Jessica Price (@Delafina777) January 19, 2015

@aphotic_ink Funy how most of the responses so far are Black Widow… @annlemay @MarvelEntCA — Tournevis (@tournevis) January 19, 2015

@MarvelEntCA Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, Captain Marvel, and Spider-Woman. — Alexa (@LuxAstarte) January 20, 2015

@MarvelEntCA Black Widow. — Chelle (@chellenator) January 20, 2015

@annlemay @MarvelEntCA Also Scarlet Witch. But definitely Black Widow :-P — Michael Ennis (@Shockwave1138) January 20, 2015

@annlemay @MarvelEntCA NGL. I want to see where Pepper’s at. But, uh, BLACK WIDOW! — Melissa Russell (@virusq) January 20, 2015

.@MarvelEntCA Black Widow. — Pippa (@pipsipirate) January 20, 2015

@MarvelEntCA Black Widow or GTFO. — maniraptor (@maniraptor) January 20, 2015

Internet, you do real good sometimes. What’s that? No, I’m just—it’s dusty in here and—my eyes are watering. Shut up!

This is just a small sampling of the responses, not even to mention the egregious omission of Hawkeye and The Hulk. Marvel Canada, hire a new social media intern. I think you’ll find Toronto is full diversity-minded nerds.

(via e-mail tip from Lil’ Q)

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It's hard enough to find the motivation to work out when you've got access to a gym, but it's even harder when you have to drag out your exercise gear in a cramped apartment because space is limited. So the creator of the Ram & Row engineered their rowing machine to transform into a stylish piece of living room furniture, allowing you to store it in plain sight when not in use.

Read more...

This sticky rice pudding can be served for breakfast or as a dessert. When I was traveling in Thailand, I had this rice pudding almost every morning, served in small banana leaf bowls, with thick coconut cream and fresh mangoes. It is easily one of my favorite food memories of all time.

READ MORE »

marvelousmission:

Jesse, again, went all in on Twitter. Food for thought.

ryanandmath:

Alice Zielinski is currently an MIT undergraduate studying aeronautical & astronautical engineering and computer science & electrical engineering. In this article, she tells us that

"Many MIT students recount questions about their GPA, test scores, magnificent things they’ve built, other accomplishments—while I often find myself trying to convince people that I actually attend MIT. The reactions that I’ve received from people range from amusing to borderline offensive, from delightful to ‘what??’"

Just another thing to show to your friends who don’t believe that sexism in STEM is a thing. Especially since she had to write a follow up addressing negative responses.

isqat-al-nizam:

lonelymountainthrush:

i wonder how much of “girls in video games always make sex noises when they die/take a hit” is really that they were meant to sound like sex noises, and how much of it is 1) our thinking that any nonverbal sound a woman makes is sexual or 2) that we’ve been conditioned to hear women in pain as sexual

The amount of times I’ve let out a painful noise or even a yawn and a man has said, “wow that sounded so dirty”.

escapekit:

Life in Japan

Tumblr user ‘1041uuu’, has created a series of GIFs that perfectly encapsulate how modern life in Japan is like. 

Did I mention they look like 8-bit video games. Awesome. 

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(comic by The Gentleman’s Armchair)

"A sign at my school." - Nathan8tr