50 YEARS AGO TODAY: Astronaut Tom Stafford inside the Gemini 9 space capsule, photographed by Gene Cernan, June 5, 1966. (NASA)
Have you experienced Game Transfer Phenomena?
GTP is when images, sounds or urges from games are transferred into people’s “real worlds”. This manifests itself in various different ways, for example hearing video game music when not playing, seeing visuals from games in the real world or when you close your eyes, or having urges to interact with the environment in a certain way based on actions you’d perform in a game.
I’m thinking of writing a feature about GTP for an online gaming publication and am very interested to hear people’s experiences with it. If you’d like to share your thoughts please do so through the form at the page below, which also contains some extra information:
Thank you!
Sophie
This graphic marks the birthday of Thomas Midgley, who was born in 1889. He didn’t have much luck with the whole chemical applications thing. His first major invention was coming up with the idea of using tetraethyl lead in petrol to stop engine knocking. Though it worked very well, it also released lead fumes from car engines. It caused lead toxicity in the workers creating the tetraethyl lead, elevated lead levels in the blood of the modern population compared to people in the 1800s, and has even been linked with an increase in violent crime levels. Midgley was aware of this toxicity (he suffered a bout of lead poisoning himself due to his work with tetraethyl lead) but denied any potential ill effects.
Midgley was also involved in the invention of Freon, the chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant gas which was later linked to depleting the ozone layer. His poor record with inventions continued until his death – he contracted polio in his 50s, which left him severely disabled. He died when a rope and pulley contraption he’d assembled to help himself out of bed tangled around and strangled him.
As a result, he didn’t live to see tetraethyl lead’s phaseout, which began in the 1970s and was completed by 2000. Petrol that doesn’t contain it is still referred to as unleaded petrol, however.
There’s much more about Midgley & tetraethyl lead here: http://wp.me/s4aPLT-petrol
THIS IS WHAT YOUR DNA LOOKS LIKE
If you’ve ever wanted to check out DNA with your naked eyes, grab some strawberries. The cells in strawberries have eight copies of each chromosome, making it easy to quickly extract a lot of DNA by breaking them open. The red layer at the bottom of this test tube is a mixture of mashed strawberries, water, table salt, and dish detergent. The soapy detergent helps dissolve the membranes of the fruit’s cells, releasing their DNA and other cellular content. The sodium ions from the salt then bind to the negatively charged phosphate groups on the DNA strands. Adding a layer of rubbing alcohol on top of the red mixture causes this DNA-sodium complex, which is not very soluble in the alcohol, to clump up into visible strands at the boundary of the layers.
Submitted by Amy Davis Roth. Do the experiment yourself.
Microfluidic Device Purifies Nucleic Acids From A Handful Of Cells
Remnant of an early Earth
Earth’s mantle is a convecting solid. It is hot enough that the material in the mantle flows viscously on a geologic timescale; over millions of years it churns and mixes. How effective is it at mixing? Over the 4.5 billion year history of the Earth, the mantle should have overturned completely several hundred times.
Imagine taking a tube of Aquafresh (the tri-colored toothpaste), emptying it into a jar, and then stirring it a hundred times. Would you be able to find any part of the toothpaste’s original colors? This article tells the story of a group of scientists basically doing exactly that for the Earth.
- little snip: let's play the little kitten game
- me: meow meow, we are little kittens
- little snip: meow meow, we are so small
- me: meow meow, who will take care of us
- little snip: meow meow, wolves are coming
- me: meow meow, what will we do
- little snip: TRANSFORM.
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