Mass Relay
in tech/IxD news, guess what i’ve preordered and am planning to hopefully hack the SDK? #leap #interaction
Researchers See Disease Injection at Atomic Resolution
The plague, bacterial dysentery and cholera have one thing in common: these dangerous diseases are caused by bacteria that infect their host using a sophisticated injection apparatus. Through needle-like structures, they release molecular agents into their host cell, thereby evading the immune response. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen in cooperation with colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin and the Univ. of Washington in Seattle have now elucidated the structure of such a needle at atomic resolution. Their findings might contribute to drug tailoring and the development of strategies that specifically prevent the infection process.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Researchers-study-Bacterial-Injection-Needlesat-Atomic-Resolution-052212.aspx
Matei Apostolescu is freelance illustrator and graphic designer based in Bucharest, Romania, EU. His works are really intricate and beautiful to wander at. When creating illustration he uses complex shapes and patterns and pays a lot of attention to the smallest details, as detail has always been one of his favorite things. via (meaning-full)
ScienceDaily (May 18, 2012) — Exercise clears the mind. It gets the blood pumping and more oxygen is delivered to the brain. This is familiar territory, but Dartmouth’s David Bucci thinks there is much more going on.
Exercise clears the mind. It gets the blood pumping and more oxygen is…
(Source: iamthespeedforce, via heatvents)
Big Gulp: Flaring Galaxy Marks the Messy Demise of a Star in a Supermassive Black Hole
A close look at a distant cataclysm indicates that the black hole’s victim was a red giant star
Once in a while, a supermassive black hole gets a sumptuous treat. A passing star wanders too close and gets caught in the black hole’s gravitational pull, like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. The star then becomes an easy meal for the black hole, which tears its prey to bits and ingests a good portion of it.
Astronomers have witnessed several such disruptions before in distant galaxies, but usually only toward the end of the process. (These feedings are far too rare, however, to have been witnessed in our own Milky Way anytime in recent human history; they occur only once every 10,000 years or so per galaxy.) Now researchers have documented a black hole’s feasting in such detail that they were able to infer its size as well as the type of star that fell prey to its gluttony.
Astronomers cannot peer inside a black hole itself; beyond the event horizon, a black hole’s point of no return, even light cannot escape into the outside world. But material falling into a black hole gives off intense flares of radiation as it compresses and heats up outside the event horizon.
Suvi Gezari, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University, and her colleagues used a number of different telescopes to track the outburst from a supermassive black hole in a galaxy more than two billion light-years away as the black hole consumed a star that ventured too close.
“While there has been evidence of these types of flares before, there’s never been enough information to say what kind of star fell victim to the black hole, and what was the mass of the black hole that destroyed the star,” Gezari says. She and her colleagues published their findings online May 2 in Nature.
(via scinerds)
Skeletal anatomy of various Mushroom Kingdom species.
X-Rayed Mario Characters
Created by Logan Zawacki
(Via: heyoscarwilde)
(via geek-art)
Bacterial Discovery May Streamline Biofuel Production
By deciphering the makeup of a bacterium found in the soil of a tropical rain forest, scientists may have a better understanding of how to more efficiently produce biofuels. The production of liquid fuels derived from plant biomass offers a promising technology for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels.
While sugars stored within the plant cell wall, known as lignocellulose, are plentiful enough to supply most energy needs on the planet, their extraction is difficult and requires chemical pretreatment followed by enzymatic digestion using micro-organisms. However, while ionic liquids — salty solvents — improve the digestibility of lignocellulose, they also are toxic to bacteria used in subsequent conversion steps.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Bacterial-Discovery-Could-Streamline-Biofuel-Production-051512.aspx
