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Structures from Nature

Image Gallery by David Walker, UK

source: microscopy-uk.org.uk

Promethean Rebirth by ChaosFissure

totally stealing this technique

Well how do you dry NMR caps?

fun things to do in lab

accidentally crushing a pcr tube when opening it with one hand

dropping… anything. especially an entire box of frozen samples. 

slightly too large gloves and getting them caught as you close tubes

when the magnetic spin bar spins too fast and does the thing

listening to someone else’s forgotten timer go off

“uh… what’s that smell..”

going in for a pipette tip and then overturning the entire box

16 hour time-points

srsly who invented 16 hr time-points

they’re inhumane

labelling rows and rows of 600 ul microcentrifuge tubes by hand

“we’re sorry but this reagent has been back-ordered for 3 months”

listening to the scraping noise of plastic culture flasks on metal shelves

getting your samples stuck in any sort of machine

“i need you to go and catalog every chemical we have”

cleaning cell culture incubators with aerosolized 70% ethanol 

having the fire alarms go off when you’re literally in the middle of something that can not be put down no i will perish in this fire before i forgo this damn experiment!

that sense of pure panic when you realize you miscalculated how much reagent you need

“one of your mice died and its cage mates ate half the body”

10 Amazing Women in STEM Who Changed How We Live Today

1) Sally Ride

As the first American woman to go to space in 1983, Sally Ride served as an inspiration for countless American girls. She also remains the youngest American astronaut to have traveled to space at age 32. Ride was extremely private about her personal life, but her obituary revealed her partner of 27 years was Tam O’Shaughnessy, making Ride the first known LGBT astronaut.

2) Ada Lovelace

Born in 1815, British mathematician and writer Ada Lovelace was way ahead of her time. She is considered to be the founder of scientific computing, and is chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s early mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine. For the Analytical Engine, Lovelace wrote the first algorithm to be carried out by a machine, and is regarded as the first computer programmer

3) Marie Maynard Daly

Marie Daly was the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry in the United States (from Columbia University in 1947). Daly worked as a physical science instructor at Howard University while conducting research under the direction of Herman R. Branson. Daly was then awarded a grant by the American Cancer Society to support her research. She studied the role of cytoplasmic ribonucleoprotein in protein synthesis, and the effects of feeding and fasting conditions on how protein metabolism changed in mice. She also worked as an assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, served as an investigator for the American Heart Association, and was a member of the prestigious board of governors of the New York Academy of Sciences.

4) Chien Shiung Wu

Chien Shiung Wu was a Chinese American experimental physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project, and helped develop the process of separating uranium metal into uranium-235 and uranium-238. Though her colleagues took the credit and won the Nobel Prize in physics, Wu is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which contradicted the hypothetical law of conservation of parity.

5) Katherine Johnson

Katherine Johnson, age 97, is an American physicist and mathematician who contributed to America’s aeronautics and space programs. Her enormous contributions with the application of early digital electronic computers at NASA, and her accuracy in calculating celestial navigation made her a key part of the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015.

6) Rosalind Franklin

While working as a research associate in 1951 at King’s College in London, Franklin encountered Maurice Wilkins, who was also studying the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin used x-rays to take a picture of DNA—known as photo 51. James Watson and Francis Crick were studying DNA at Cambridge University, and communicated with Wilkins, who showed them Franklin’s image of DNA without her knowledge. While Franklin’s image of the DNA molecule was key to the work of Watson, Crick, and Wilkins, they received significantly more credit and acclaim. Franklin died of ovarian cancer four years before Watson, Crick, and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize.

7) Hypatia of Alexandria

Women have been in STEM fields forever! Hypatia of Alexandria was born somewhere between AD 350-370, and was murdered by a Christian mob in AD 415. She was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, and was most notable for being the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria where she taught philosophy and astronomy.

8) Annie J. Easley

Born in 1933, Annie J. Easley was a computer scientist, mathematician, and rocket scientist. She was also one of the first African-Americans in her field. In her work with NASA and its predecessor (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), she was a leading member of the team that developed software for the Centaur rocket stage.

9) Gertrude B. Elion

American biochemist and pharmacologist is best known for her Nobel Prize winning work developing a multitude of new drugs, and using research methods that led to the development of the AIDS drug, AZT. Elion fittingly said, “I had no specific bent toward science until my grandfather died of cancer. I decided nobody should suffer that much.”

10) Flossie Wong-Staal

Virologist and molecular biologist, Flossie Wong-Staal, was the first scientist to clone HIV, which was a major step in proving that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Wong-Staal’s work has also focused on hepatitis C, and she currently works as Chief Scientific Officer at a drug development company.

slanty sides or die trying

This is the heated debate amongst chemistry students: what’s the best way to draw 5-membered rings? 1) The ergonomic flat bottom with low error rates but clumpy bond angles. 2) The slick-slanty-sided pentagon with classy bond angles, but when it goes wrong it goes very wrong.

What’s your verdict?

MIT discovers a new state of matter, a new kind of magnetism

“Really, though, the most exciting thing about quantum spin liquids is that they’re completely new, and thus we ultimately have no idea how they might eventually affect our world. “We have to get a more comprehensive understanding of the big picture,” Lee says. “There is no theory that describes everything that we’re seeing.””

russia’s lake baikal - the world’s oldest, largest and deepest freshwater lake - freezes over for half the year, creating clear, turquoise shards of ice. (photos x, x x, x, x, x) 

Some random crystals formed from my raw reaction mixture at the bottom of a flask.

The second at the third is cropped from the original sized picture. 

The picture in a large size (3000px wide) could be found HERE, without watermark. Use it as a wallpaper or print it out and put it on your wall.  Other pictures from the best posts could be  purchased at Society6, now with a free worldwide shipping over here: https://society6.com/labphoto?promo=NJYKQ8VB9QKT 

Book recommendation for anyone who has ever spent any time in academia as either a teacher or a student. The Saber-Tooth Curriculum is a 1939 sharp-witted critique of the educational system that hasn’t lost an ounce of relevance in the 77 years since its publication. Its pseudonymous author J. Abner Peddiwell describes a society of cavemen who refuse to update their curriculum of fish-grabbing, horse-clubbing, and tiger-scaring long after the environment around them has changed. The book serves as an excellent argument against the fallacious logic often used in the defense of preserving tradition in academia.

Illustrations taken from the classic edition.