FYEAH, CHEMISTRY!

+ you can submit posts/inquiries here JANUARY 20 2012 UPDATE: Note that all messages and submissions received before this date have NOT been looked at, and all submissions and questions for now are discouraged as we will not be able to process them until mid March 2012. None of the work here is created by us unless stated. If your work is within a post and you want credit or removal, please contact me via the submission page.

[itsokaytobesmart]

Thanks to your epic smarts (and probably a good amount if Google image search), many of you correctly identified this “mystery” sequence of numbers in pi as the Feynman Point.

Pi is an irrational number, and its sequence is infinite and non-repeating. But there are some cute patterns to be found (as there would be if you look hard enough in any infinitely large number). Feynman thought that if he could memorize pi up to the 762nd decimal place, he could trick people into thinking it was rational and say “999999 and so on and so on …”

Of course, it wouldn’t have fooled Lu Chao, a Chinese man who has memorized pi all the way out to 67,890 digits, according to the World Rankings of Pi Memorization, which is a thing that actually exists.

[itsokaytobesmart]

Quiz time. What famous physicist is the sequence in orange named after, what the hell are we looking at, and why is it significant?

[those-two-atheists-blog]

[scinerds]

Two More Elements Added to The Periodic Table

You can now greet by name two new residents of the period table of elements: Flerovium and Livermorium.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry officially approved names for the elements — which sit at slot 114 and 116, respectively — on 31 May. They have until now gone by the temporary monikers ununquadium and ununhexium.

[itsokaytobesmart]

The Flame Challenge Finalists

What is a flame?

A couple months back we talked about a really cool science communication contest called The Flame Challenge. Alan Alda (yes, the actor) was always frustrated that his teacher never gave him a good answer for “what is a flame?” You know, this is a really entertaining image in my head. An 11-year-old with Alan Alda’s voice is pretty much the funniest thing I’ve thought of all day. But I digress …

Science communicators everywhere submitted their videos, stories and illustrations to try and explain a flame in simple, fun terms. I was going to submit one, but my animation skills are so far limited to making a word do a cartwheel. I need some practice, or someone smarter to collaborate with. And the best part? The submissions were judged by 11-year-olds (second only to New York Times food critics in their ruthless thresholds of perfection).

On Saturday, at the World Science Festival in NYC, Mr. Alda will present the winner. I know who my money’s on (Hint: Did you watch that video!?), but be sure to check out all the finalists.

Light a fire of curiosity for someone today and share the story of a flame!

(via Center for Communicating Science and World Science Festival)

[holymoleculesbatman]

X-ray Crystallography

It is a method of determining the arrangement of atoms within a crystal, in which a beam of X-rays strikes a crystal and causes the beam of light to spread into many specific directions. From the angles and intensities of these diffracted beams, a crystallographer can produce a three-dimensional picture of the density of electrons within the crystal. From this electron density, the mean positions of the atoms in the crystal can be determined, as well as their chemical bonds, their disorder and various other information.

X-ray crystallography can locate every atom in a zeolite, an aluminosilicate with many important applications, such as water purification. 

Read More 

[staceythinx]

Science is lovely in silk (at least it is in the hands of Karen Kamenetzky).

Kamenetzky on her work:

I dye, paint and stitch cottons and silks to create boldly colored wallhangings inspired by microscopic/cellular imagery - a kind of visual invented biology with textiles. I find this imagery metaphorically rich since all change fundamentally happens on this infinitesimal level.

[throughascientificlens]

Tetrafluoroethylene, Polytetrafluoroethylene, and Teflon (C2F4)

Tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) is the simplest alkene fluorocarbon. It is colourless, odorless and a gas at room temperature. It is unstable, tending towards decomposition to C and CF4, it also forms explosive peroxides in contact with air.

TFE can be polymerized to form polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), also known as Teflon. In the polymerization of TFE, the double bond between the carbons is broken thus leaving each carbon to readily bond to another atom. PTFE is hydrophobic which in conjunction with multiple other properties makes it highly useful in coatings for non-stick pans.

(Images via wikimedia, benbest.com, and 3dchem.com)

[holymoleculesbatman]

The international radiation symbol (also known as trefoil) first appeared in 1946, at the University of California, Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. At the time, it was rendered as magenta, and was set on a blue background. The modern version used in the U.S. is magenta against a yellow background, and it is drawn with a central circle of radius R, an internal radius of 1.5R and an external radius of 5R for the blades, which are separated from each other by 60°. The trefoil is black in the international version, which is also acceptable in the U.S.

[turtlebiscuit-deactivated201310]

I have been dying to do this.

[pipeschapman-deactivated2025041]

Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson (youtube)

[fyeahsuperheroes]

[knowyourmeme]

[xoxothescenery-deactivated20141]

[sciencepopularis-blog]

Oh so true….

Credit: SMBC

[skaterboytae]

When a honeybee dies it releases a death pheromone, a characteristic odor that signals the survivors to remove it from the hive. This might seem a supreme final act of social responsibility. The corpse is promptly pushed and tugged out of the hive. The death pheromone is oleic acid [a fairly complex molecule, CH3(CH2)7CH=CH(CH2)7COOH, where = stands for a double chemical bond]. 

What happens if a live bee is dabbed with a drop of oleic acid?

Then, no matter how strapping and vigorous it might be, it is carried “kicking and screaming” out of the hive. Even the Queen bee, if she’s painted with invisible amounts of oleic acid, will be subjected to this indignity.

Do the bees understand the danger of corpses decomposing in the hive? Are they aware of the connection between death and oleic acid? Do they have any idea what death is? Do they think to check the oleic acid signal against other information, such as healty spontaneous movement? The answer to all these questions is, almost certainly, No. In the life of the hive there’s no way that a bee can give off detectable whiff of oleic acid other than by dying. Elaborate contemplative machinery is unnecessary. Their perceptions are adequate for their needs.

Ann Druyan & Carl Sagan, Shadows Of Forgotten Ancestors: Who Are We?, What Thin Partitions 

[expose-the-light]

The Art in Biomedical Research

1. Muscle Stem Cell Factories

Credit: FASEB 2012 Bio-Art Winner - Douglas B. Cowan

This micrograph shows cells called myoblasts attached to spherical microcarriers, which allow the growth of adult stem cells that have been isolated from skeletal muscle. The stem cells are shown in green. By combining these cells in a bioreactor, the muscle stem cells can be greatly increased in number and then separated from the myoblast “feeder” cells. The image was produced in the course of studies aimed at creating artificial “stem cell factories” and was supported by NIH funding from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

2. Scaffold for Cartilage Regeneration

Credit: FASEB 2012 Bio-Art Winner - Frank Moutos and Farshid Guilak

Due to a lack of blood vessels and other characteristics, cartilage heals very slowly. One way to accelerate natural cartilage repair and growth is to use tissue engineering, or the artificially-stimulated production of functional replacement tissue. The image shows a three-dimensionally woven biomaterial scaffold. The scaffold consists of multiple layers of resorbable fiber bundles that have been woven into a porous structure. The scaffold is then seeded with cells that grow to become new tissue as the fibers are resorbed. The fibers provide stiffness and strength in a manner that mimics native collagenous tissues such as cartilage. This work to use tissue engineering to generate replacement cartilage is supported by NIH funding from the National Institutes of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.

3. Production of New Neurons

Credit: FASEB 2012 Bio-Art Winner - Grigori Enikolopov and Ann-Shyn Chiang

New neurons are produced from neural stem cells in several areas of the adult brain. One such area is in the hippocampus, a brain structure crucial for cognitive function. The number of neural stem cells in the hippocampus decreases over time, possibly contributing to the cognitive impairment associated with aging. When activated by extrinsic stimuli, stem cells divide and generate progenitor cells, which eventually mature into neurons and migrate into the layers above, whereas stem cells themselves undergo additional rounds of rapid divisions and convert into astrocytes, thus leaving the stem cell pool. The image depicts stem cells (green) and neuronal nuclei (red). This research to understand how the brain produces new neurons is supported by NIH through the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Aging.

4. Brain, Heart, and Lung Communication

Credit: FASEB 2012 Bio-Art Winner - Li-Hsien Lin

Both glutamate and nitric oxide play an important role in transmitting cardiovascular and respiratory signals between the brain, heart, and lung. This butterfly shaped figure is an image of a rat spinal cord showing the distribution of three types of glutamate and nitric oxide synthesizing enzymes. Understanding the action and interaction of glutamate and nitric oxide in the nervous system could lead to better treatments for cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension and heart failure. This work is supported by NIH funding from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.