Read What It Was Like To Witness The Challenger Disaster In Person At The Washington Post.

SCIENTISTS SAY SPIDER-MAN CAN’T EXIST BECAUSE HUMANS ARE JUST TOO BIG

Sorry, Spidey. Any real-life Spider-Man would have to have size 114 shoes (sticky ones) or have 40% of his body covered in sticky pads in order to climb walls. 

Learn Everything You Need To Know About Chemicals In Your Food in 4 Easy Steps!

Step One

Obtain High School level Chemistry textbook. 

Step Two 

Open the book to chapter one, section one. 

Step Three

Locate and identify the goals of chapter one: basic definition of chemistry. 

Step Four

Discover that EVERYTHING IS MADE OF CHEMICALS. 

Whew. That was pretty scary, wasn’t it? Education is hard. Learning about scary chemicals is a big adventure. But aren’t you glad you pulled through? I’m glad we had this talk. 

Danxia Landforms, China

These colorful rock formations are the result of red sandstone and mineral deposits laid down over millions of years. Wind and rain then carved amazing shapes into the rock, forming natural pillars, towers, ravines, valleys, and waterfalls.

The use of 3-D printers has opened up the possibility of on-demand implants, prosthetics, and medical devices. This week, scientists reported that they were able to 3-D-print the first stable ear, bone, and muscle structures out of living cells and implant them in mice. The results were published in Nature Biotechnology. Anthony Atala, the director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and an author on that paper, describes the challenges of 3-D printing living cells and how the technology could be used in bioengineering body parts.

Erythrite

Locality:

Clara Mine, Rankach valley, Oberwolfach, Wolfach, Black Forest, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

Photo & collection Chollet Pascal

HEY EVERYONE LOOK AT THESE NEKO ATSUME UNDERTALE CHARACTERS MY FRIEND DREW!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!!! she doesn’t have a tumblr but I needed to share them with the world and she said it was okay so LOOOOOK!!!!

Graphene Safely Interacts With Neurons in the Brain

Researchers have shown that graphene can be used to make electrodes that can be implanted in the brain, which could potentially be used to restore sensory functions for amputee or paralysed patients, or for individuals with motor disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

The research is in ACS Nano. (full access paywall)

While you see many varieties of the common mold in your house and garden, the scientific word to describe them has a fascinating history.  Aspergillus is a genus of 300 or so common molds found in all types of climates around the world.  The Aspergillus mold was first catalogued in 1729 by the Italian priest and biologist Pier Antonio Micheli. These molds are in the fungus kingdom and while almost all are microscopic, colonies of the mold are easily recognizable and can grow quite large. Viewing the fungi under a microscope, Micheli was reminded of the shape of an aspergillum, which is the Latin word for a holy water sprinkler, itself from Latin spargere meaning to sprinkle, and named the fungus for the shape of the sprinkler.

You can see the similarity above, in the image of a silver aspergillium next to a microscopic view of aspergillus mold next to a colony of aspergillus mold growing on a damp terra cotta pot.

Image of aspergillium courtesy of Andreas Püttmann under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.  Image of aspergillus and mold colony courtesy Kathie Hodge and the Cornell University Fungi team.  

Periodic table showing the cosmogenic origin of each element.

Via APOD

Original source: Wikimedia Commons (Nucleosynthesis periodic table)

At Biotech Party, Gender Diversity Means Cocktail Waitresses

Outside the Exploratorium, an airy event space on San Francisco’s waterfront, a long line of mostly male biotechnology investors and executives waited to get into a party.

The ballrooms of the Westin St. Francis hotel were packed with rows of men in blue and gray suits. Outside the hotel, where attendees gather for coffee, was about the same -- of 47 people sitting on one side of the square outside the conference hotel, two were women. Of those, one was in media relations. There was no line for the women’s bathroom.

LifeSci’s McDonald says it’s just reality that the industry and its investors skew male. That’s why he hired the models.

“When you think about going to a party, when you don’t have any models, it’s going to be 90/10, or even greater, male-to-female,” he said. “Adding in some females changes the dynamic quite a bit.”