Ben Plowman

A Review on Night Enhancement Eyedrops Using Chlorin e6

The patent claims that a mixture can be made which, when applied to the eye, will absorb to the retina and act to increase vision in low light. The mixture put forth in the patent is a simple combination of Ce6 and insulin in saline. It is mentioned in the same, that dimethlysulfoxide (DMSO) can be used in place of the insulin. We propose a combination of the two could lead to the most noted effects. For testing purposes, the mixture from the patent (Ce6, Saline, Insulin) was used with the addition of DMSO for increased permeability.

spaceexp:

Comparative Wheel Sizes of Mars Rovers

“The next morning, the prince went to Aschenputtel’s house and tried the slipper on the eldest stepsister. The sister was advised by her mother to cut off her toes in order to fit the slipper. While riding with the stepsister, the two doves from Heaven told the Prince that blood dripped from her foot. Appalled by her treachery, he went back again and tried the slipper on the other stepsister. She cut off part of her heel in order to get her foot in the slipper, and again the prince was fooled. While riding with her to the king’s castle, the doves alerted him again about the blood on her foot. He came back to inquire about another girl. The gentleman told him that they kept a kitchen-maid in the house – omitting to mention that she was his own daughter – and the prince asked him to let her try on the slipper. The girl appeared after washing herself, and when she put on the slipper, the prince recognized her as the stranger with whom he had danced at the ball.”

-

Cinderella - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There’s a lot more foot mutilitation in the Brothers Grimm version of Cinderella than made it into the movie.

jakovu:

dama3:

tastefullyoffensive:

Babylonian era problems. (photo via tbc34)

old school hate mail

Imagine how pissed you have to be to engrave a rock

aspirethesenses:

Beaver City, Nebraska, 1989. (by: Marrilee Thomas)

Researchers at the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience and Kanazawa University (Japan) have imaged structural dynamics of living neurons with unprecedented spatial resolution and speed by using a modified atomic force microscope (AFM).

The AFM is a leading tool for imaging, measuring, and manipulating materials with atomic resolution — on the order of fractions of a nanometer — by scanning (“touching” and “feeling”) its surface with an extremely fine needle (the diameter of the tip is about 5 nanometers) on the surface. However, it can’t be used with neurons and other living cells without damaging the sample, and it’s too slow (it takes many minutes to acquire an image).

Imaging living neurons and other cells

In their March open-access publication in Scientific Reports, Ryohei Yasuda and Mikihiro Shibata at Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience in collaboration with Kanazawa University describe their new long-tip high-speed (LT-HS-AFM) system. It operates at a scanning speed orders of magnitude faster than that of conventional AFM.

To avoid damaging biological samples, using an extremely long, sharp needle attached to a highly flexible plate and a high-speed (800 kHz) light tapping-mode scanning system combined with an extremely soft cantilever to apply low force on the sample. The system uses a wide-area scanner to image large area of mammalian cells (up to ~5 × 5 square micrometers) and optical microscopy to facilitate the positioning of the scanning tip on samples.

The new device images without any sign of cellular damage, it’s optimized for fast scanning (seconds per image) to capture dynamic events in living cells, and has a spatial resolution up to 100 times better than a standard light microscope.

In particular, this study demonstrates the capability to track structural dynamics and remodeling of the cell surface, such as morphogenesis (how the form is created) of filopodia, membrane ruffles, pit formation, or endocytosis in response to environmental stimulants.

Examples of this capability are seen in the movie above, where morphological changes of a finger-like neuronal protrusion in the mature hippocampal neuron are imaged, and in the movie below, where a fibroblast is imaged before and after treatment with insulin hormone, which intensely enhances the ruffling at the leading edge of the cell.

Yasuda says the researchers hope to visualize the morphology of synapses at nanometer resolution and in real time in the near future. Since morphology changes of synapses underlie synaptic plasticity and our learning and memory, this will provide us with many new insights into mechanisms of how neurons store information in their morphology, how it changes synaptic strength, and ultimately how it creates new memory, he suggests.

---

Abstract of Long-tip high-speed atomic force microscopy for nanometer-scale imaging in live cells

Visualization of morphological dynamics of live cells with nanometer resolution under physiological conditions is highly desired, but challenging. It has been demonstrated that high-speed atomic force microscopy is a powerful technique for visualizing dynamics of biomolecules under physiological conditions. However, application of high-speed atomic force microscopy for imaging larger objects such as live mammalian cells has been complicated because of the collision between the cantilever and samples. Here, we demonstrate that attaching an extremely long (~3 μm) and thin (~5 nm) tip by amorphous carbon to the cantilever allows us to image the surface structure of live cells with the spatiotemporal resolution of nanometers and seconds. We demonstrate that long-tip high-speed atomic force microscopy is capable of imaging morphogenesis of filopodia, membrane ruffles, pit formation, and endocytosis in COS-7, HeLa cells and hippocampal neurons.

What is Your Password?

superdrivel:

Try not to be mad, y’all, it’s going to a good cause.

Aaand fedexed.

i used to live 8 minutes from astroworld! Only went twice though. It was a terrifying and magical place. Easily one of the best places within walking distance of the Astrodome. Way better than the Conoco that sold all three grades of gas for the same price ($0.999 per gallon)

inflammation, my inner flame, my life force

Scientists have captured the first detailed microscopy images of ultra-small bacteria believed to be about as small as life can get.

The existence of ultra-small bacteria (aka “nanobacteria” or “nannobacteria”) has been debated for two decades, but there hasn’t been a comprehensive electron microscopy and DNA-based description of the microbes until now.

They are about 200 nanometers (.2 micrometers) in width with a volume of only about 0.009 cubic nanomicrons (millionth of a meter). About 150 of these bacteria could fit inside an Escherichia coli bacteria cell.

The diverse bacteria were found in groundwater and are thought to be quite common. This is the smallest a cell can be and still accommodate enough material to sustain life, the researchers say.

The bacterial cells have densely packed spirals that are probably DNA, a very small number of ribosomes, hair-like appendages, and a stripped-down metabolism that likely requires them to rely on other bacteria for many of life’s necessities.

Enigmatic

The bacteria are from three microbial phyla that are poorly understood. Learning more about the organisms from these phyla could shed light on the role of microbes in the planet’s climate, our food and water supply, and other key processes.

“These newly described ultra-small bacteria are an example of a subset of the microbial life on earth that we know almost nothing about,” says Jill Banfield, a Senior Faculty Scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division and a UC Berkeley professor in the departments of Earth and Planetary Science and Environmental Science, Policy and Management.

“They’re enigmatic. These bacteria are detected in many environments and they probably play important roles in microbial communities and ecosystems. But we don’t yet fully understand what these ultra-small bacteria do,” says Banfield.

To concentrate these cells in a sample, they filtered groundwater collected at Rifle, Colorado through successively smaller filters, down to 0.2 microns, which is the size used to sterilize water.

The frozen samples were transported to Berkeley Lab, where Birgit Luef (a former postdoctoral researcher in Banfield’s group who is now at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology) characterized the cells’ size and internal structure using 2D and 3D cryogenic transmission electron microscopy.

The images revealed dividing cells, indicating the bacteria were healthy and not starved to an abnormally small size.

The bacteria’s genomes were sequenced at the Joint Genome Institute, a DOE Office of Science User Facility located in Walnut Creek, California. The genomes were about one million base pairs in length.

Among their findings: Some of the bacteria have thread-like appendages, called pili, which could serve as “life support” connections to other microbes, and the bacteria lack many basic functions, so they likely rely on a community of microbes for critical resources.

The research, led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, was reported Friday, Feb. 27, in the journal Nature Communications.

The research was supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

---

Abstract of Diverse uncultivated ultra-small bacterial cells in groundwater

Bacteria from phyla lacking cultivated representatives are widespread in natural systems and some have very small genomes. Here we test the hypothesis that these cells are small and thus might be enriched by filtration for coupled genomic and ultrastructural characterization. Metagenomic analysis of groundwater that passed through a ~0.2-μm filter reveals a wide diversity of bacteria from the WWE3, OP11 and OD1 candidate phyla. Cryogenic transmission electron microscopy demonstrates that, despite morphological variation, cells consistently have small cell size (0.009±0.002 μm³). Ultrastructural features potentially related to cell and genome size minimization include tightly packed spirals inferred to be DNA, few densely packed ribosomes and a variety of pili-like structures that might enable inter-organism interactions that compensate for biosynthetic capacities inferred to be missing from genomic data. The results suggest that extremely small cell size is associated with these relatively common, yet little known organisms.

“Robert Hendricks, an attorney for Uber, told the court that the company is a technology platform, not a transportation business, and is simply licensing its product to drivers. “We make our money from licensing our software. When they use it successfully we can be compensated,” he said. “There is a difference between benefiting from a transaction and from a service.””

- Judge: Uber, Lyft drivers may have employee status - San Francisco Business Times (via iamdanw)

radicalarchive:

Communique issued by the Weather Underground, United States, 1974.

this is my new favorite video

Hercules reads his script entirely wrong
(reads the word disappointed, when he was supposed to sound disappointed)

lavendersteam:

dan mintz (voice of tina on bob’s burgers) did an AMA

Important meetings happened

bonny-notion:

found this in a doctors office

im not convinced they know what drugs do

postscript how could you

welcometobusinesstown:

The Intrapreneur is an agile agent of dynamic corporate change. /

gettin close to home here

In what may be one of the most ground-breaking developments in creating artificial sunlight, a group of Italian scientists recently announced CoeLux, a new kind of skylight that perfectly mimics the feel of daylight. The creator’s claim the system is so effective that it tricks unknowing individuals into thinking they are looking up at the actual sun.

The inventors are somewhat tight-lipped about how CoeLux works, but it involves filtering a light source through a layer of nanoparticles that mimic Earth’s atmosphere. Because of this, not only does the color match sunshine but the quality does as well. In the photos above—which CoeLux insists aren’t digitally altered—you can get an idea of how realistic the light is, and see it in action in the video.

The light is currently available in three different configurations that mimic sunlight at different points on the globe including tropical, mediterranean, and nordic environments. Applications for CoeLux might involve anywhere light is scarce, from extreme environments like scientific outposts to underground parking garages or even in hospitals. You can see more on their website. (via PetaPixel)

skunkbear:

The top image is a photograph of a lush rainforest canopy. The bottom image colors each tree based on its species.

How? It’s all thanks to a special lab built by ecologist Greg Asner inside a twin-turboprop airplane. From a few thousand feet up, the Carnegie Airborne Observatory uses lasers, spectrometers and other instruments to build a detailed 3-D model of a forest, identify different species of vegetation and quantify carbon sequestration. It’s a lot quicker than tramping through the jungle and taking these measurements on foot.

A fun tidbit from the full story:
"On one occasion, he and his team mapped more than 6,500 square miles of the Colombian Amazon at night — about the size of Connecticut plus Rhode Island — flying with all their lights out to avoid being shot at by the FARC, the Colombian rebel force.”

Images: Greg Asner, Carnegie Airborne Observatory

rasputinette:

circuitfry:

archivealicorn:

Good fucking job, tumblr. Putting every single character in its own for quotes… oy vey

STAFF YOU DID WHAT

this is so beautiful and fucked up, i’m crying

this is bordering on obfuscation

Oh I know all about Weekend Update. You must not come to superdrivel often, where media is gender-neutral monarch. Saturday Night Live is as mainstream as it gets.

The point is that Unicode is not a company. Unicode does not make emojis. Unicode is a standard, and it would be far more offensive to make an exhaustive set of race/ethnicity-specific icons. Have a browse http://unicodelookup.com/#symbol

The issue appears to be with Apple’s (or whatever company’s) choices when they made their icon set.

birdmanthefilm:

petervidani

PREVIOUSLY ON BIRDMANTHEFILM 

more of peter’s things

some trees are very, very large (by me)

So far, the experiment has worked. Those of you paying attention are now part of a secret society.

gifsboom:

That Precision.[video]