[endangereduglythings]

While discussing Newton’s laws in my Physical Science class, I mentioned a factoid from Mary Roach’s book, Packing for Mars, that you cannot launch yourself around the ISS with farts. Apparently many astronauts have tried.

(Gross facts are a wonderful way to keep high schoolers’ attention.)

So, a few days ago, student asked if you could launch yourself by pee. As he came into the classroom today, I handed him this whiteboard. I warned him that the biggest problem with asking a scientist a question is that you might get an answer.

(Also, I’m sure someone can check my math on this.)

[sosuperawesome]

Vinyl Stickers by Natelle Quek on Etsy

More like this

[unflatteringcatselfies]

Clayton will shank you if you take his pipe cleaner.

[ucsdhealthsciences]

Building a Virtual Cell

Our cells are made up of extremely intricate networks of genes, proteins and other molecules that move around, carry messages, respond to changes in the environment and perform functions, like producing insulin or beating in unison. Researchers who study these processes usually focus on just one thing, such as studying a single gene or protein.

To provide researchers with a more global view of cells and their networks, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers created Active Interaction Mapping, a program that organizes raw data into a model of the cell.

“This tool is meant to guide researchers interested in any aspect of cellular function, helping them select the next logical experiments to learn about that process,” said Michael Kramer, an MD/PhD student who helped develop the program in the lab of Trey Ideker, PhD, professor of genetics and bioengineering.

Not only do researchers benefit from Active Interaction Mapping, they also contribute. The model becomes more powerful as more researchers roll their data back into it.

To test Active Interaction Mapping, Ideker and team used autophagy in yeast cells as an example cellular process. Autophagy is the process by which cells recycle their components — a system that can go awry in cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and many other conditions. The model told them that genetic experiments were needed, so they went back to the lab to do them. In doing so, the team uncovered previously unknown autophagy roles for a number of genes — information they then fed back into the model.

The study published January 26 in Molecular Cell. Researchers can download the Active Interaction Mapping software at atgo.ucsd.edu

Ideker, Kramer and team have already started modeling human cells. In the future, they hope to offer not just healthy cell models, but models for diseased cells. The ultimate goal is to offer personalized cell modeling — a window not just into a cancer cell, but your unique cancer cell.

On being a monstrous person.

[cosmictuesdays]

I’m very glad I waited so long to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because as much as I knew Spike would be one of my favorite characters - as it turns out, not just the show, but pretty much anywhere - I wouldn’t have easily been able to articulate my attachment to him. I know in middle and high school, I’d have fallen for him hard, and I might even have been glad for that, and even now I’m happy to see him. Maybe I’d have used him when I was younger, that I can’t say. What I can say is how much of what I love about him is due to him being a vampire, being very much a product of genre fiction. The things I love most about him are pretty much impossible to find outside of genre fiction.

Beyond him being a monster whose ability to express his feelings was deliberately broken - he had the feelings but no way to act on them without being hurt, and even if they were some of the most horrible feelings possible, they were still his.

Beyond him never not wanting to be a monster, someone who reveled in that even while he knew it cut him off from things he wanted and people he wanted to be with, because he was genuinely happy with what he was.

Beyond him being something everyone, including him, agrees is a monster who’s done terrible things and deserves terrible things done to him but still has the chance to make himself better, to be accepted, even if he doesn’t want to change his fundamental nature, because he wants to be a better person without stopping being a monster.

Spike is a demonstration that monstrosity isn’t a prohibition against being a person.

Because Spike is one of three characters I know of - the other two are Shadowchild from Digger and Chava from The Golem and the Djinni - who developed a sense of morality through deliberate work and conscious intelligence. Without any innate awareness of right and wrong, without an intuitive grasp on the subject, he still managed to piece something together, with the kicker being he never denies his emotions. Spike is consistently a deeply emotional character, even before getting ensouled, and it’s those emotions which pushed him out of his amoral state into a place where he wanted to do better, and be better, so he struggled to change himself. Even in genre fiction, most characters who come to morality consciously aren’t necessarily emotional. But Spike is. And Spike stays emotional, even while trying to figure out what’s expected of him, what he’s supposed to do. Even without that innate grasp on the concepts involved, he still tries to understand them.

His emotions are never denied or repressed; they’re always present and intense. He decided to become moral because of his emotional ties to the people around him, without his emotions being able to tell him how to be a good person, and he figured that out through deduction, observation, and conscious intelligence.

It’s the internal division of morality, emotion, and intelligence without any of those parts being ignored or denied, but all of them allowed to remain, and inform each other, as he develops and changes. The decision to behave morally before developing the internalized sense of how to do so is a very compelling narrative, and one that doesn’t happen much outside of fantasy.

I wouldn’t have had the words to say how much seeing it would have meant to me.

[spaceexp]

Nasa just uploaded over 14.000 photos of the Apollo Missions to Flickr

by Apollo Image Gallery

[humanoidhistory]

Mutiny in Outer Space (1965)

[retrocgads]

UK 1988