I’d always sort of thought that people with severe peanut allergies could have a reaction from being too close to peanuts, even without touching them. Turns out, that’s not true. Usually. Read the rest
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How indirect allergen exposure works
Researchers borrowed optical techniques from astronomy and ophthalmology to dramatically improve imaging of biological samples. This video, created by scientists at the HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus, shows neurons in the brain of a living zebrafish embryo. You can see the difference in quality when their new technique of “adaptive optics” is switched on and off. According to physicist/engineer Eric Betzig who led the research, “The results are pretty eye-popping.” Yes. Yes they are. ( HHMI News , via National Geographic )
Image: Nicholas Buer , via APOD . A particularly psychedelic Astronomy Picture of the Day : There is a road that connects the Northern to the Southern Cross but you have to be at the right place and time to see it. The road, as pictured above, is actually the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy; the right place, in this case, is dark Laguna Cejar in Salar de Atacama of Northern Chile ; and the right time was in early October, just after sunset. You can follow APOD on Twitter , too.
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From the Northern to the Southern Cross (astronomy photo by Nicholas Buer)
Research from UC Berkeley’s Kater Murch and team has allowed fine observation of a quantum waveform collapse. Observing single quantum trajectories of a superconducting quantum bit , published in Nature , describes the experiment, which used indirect observations of microwaves that had passed through a box containing a circuit where a particle was in a state of superposition, allowing the researchers to view the collapse in slow-motion.
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Researchers get slo-mo footage of the collapse of a quantum waveform
These coy hippos come from a 19th century illustration in The Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. They’re now part of a new book, published by New York’s American Museum of Natural History, that combines some of the best illustrations and artworks from the museum’s rare book collection .
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The best of the American Museum of Natural History’s rare book collection
After spending $250,000 worth of anonymously donated money, Mark Post from Maastricht University is ready to go public with his first vat-grown hamburger, which will be cooked and eaten at an event in London this week. Though they claim that it’s healthier than regular meat, one question not answered in the article is the Omega 3/6 balance — crappy, corn-fed, factory-farmed meet is full of Omega 6s and avoided by many eaters; the grass-fed, free-range stuff is higher in Omega 3s. Yet growing meat in the laboratory has proved difficult and devilishly expensive. Dr. Post, who knows as much about the subject as anybody, has repeatedly postponed the hamburger cook-off, which was originally expected to take place in November. His burger consists of about 20,000 thin strips of cultured muscle tissue. Dr. Post, who has conducted some informal taste tests, said that even without any fat, the tissue “tastes reasonably good.” For the London event he plans to add only salt and pepper. But the meat is produced with materials — including fetal calf serum, used as a medium in which to grow the cells — that eventually would have to be replaced by similar materials of non-animal origin. And the burger was created at phenomenal cost — 250,000 euros, or about $325,000, provided by a donor who so far has remained anonymous. Large-scale manufacturing of cultured meat that could sit side-by-side with conventional meat in a supermarket and compete with it in price is at the very least a long way off.“This is still an early-stage technology,” said Neil Stephens, a social scientist at Cardiff University in Wales who has long studied the development of what is also sometimes referred to as “shmeat.” “There’s still a huge number of things they need to learn.” There are also questions of safety — though Dr. Post and others say cultured meat should be as safe as, or safer than, conventional meat, and might even be made to be healthier — and of the consumer appeal of a product that may bear little resemblance to a thick, juicy steak. Engineering the $325,000 Burger [Henry Fountain/New York Times] ( via /. )
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First vatburger is ready to eat