Check out some stuff from my festive adventure sites (originally blogposts, now compiled as a free PDF on Itch)!
🎄 🎄 Fun xmas characters: 🎄🎄
⭐ Jephrow Bosk. Skeleton xylophonist. Thinking of branching out into skull bongos. Wears the Tiara Of Undead Control, giving him huge reserves of self-actualisation.
⭐ Inkoo and Shmo. Gigantic carnivorous penguins. Mountaineers and expert guides.
⭐ Mister Hiphup. Transient snowman. Eagerly hiking through this new world, unaware he will live only a few more hours.
⭐ Terrrence Norrbrright. Gangly hollow-eyed elf. Legate of a deposed tyrant. Pretending not to hate good cheer. Smile like a death rictus.
⭐ A small team of gnomes wearing steamsuits on their hike through the snow. Going to the big city to look for work as interior designers.
⭐ Honoria Of The True Zenith Unparalleled. Treetop angel. She's dipped a toe in her molten deity and is ecstatically dissolving. Until then, spreading the good word.
🎄🎄 Oddly festive locales: 🎄🎄
⭐ The valley of eternal cheer. A rocky crevasse; something's humming a carol far below. Its occupant: the Blissful Homogenate. A rainbow lake of hot plastic and molten flesh. The blended remnants of innumerable misfit toys and wayward wanderers, now a hivemind experiencing True Holiday Joy.
⭐ Campsite hastily erected around the broken-down "Snowtreader". Q-class heavy gingerbread mecha commissioned by the Heat Miser. Armed with a devastating heat ray and six pop-out turrets which lob chocolate shells at an unbelievable rate of fire.
⭐ Village of the roblings. Nest-like communal yurts made from reindeer hides, dried moss, and goose down. Roblings: half-goblin, half-robin, suffering powerful compulsions to rob.
⭐ Citadel of the angels. Pine treehouse fortress. Winding ladders. Concentric walls of stakes at the base help keep out interlopers. The gate and the charitable donation box are kept unlocked. Treasury stuffed with frankincense and myrrh.
🎄🎄 Oh-so-jolly treasures: 🎄🎄
⭐ Woadstone. A stone amulet which dyes you blue when worn.
⭐ Sceptre Of The Snow Miser. Turns a foot-wide sphere of solid matter into snow with a touch. Exactly as horrid as it sounds.
⭐ A sack of rubies and sapphires. Used as 'practise gems' by an apprentice gnome lapidary, they are all very badly carved.
⭐ Huge golden key to Sniffleheim, city of the frost giants. Etched on the obverse with the Sniffleheim coat of arms and on the reverse with "Property of Jarl Keith".
⭐ Single-use doomsday device. Capable of instantly tinselifying all organic life in a six-league radius, leaving nothing but glittering strands strewn across the landscape.
It's hexmas! Grab a couple of weird fantasy sites to adventure through.
Diabetes mellitus is characterized by disrupted glucose homeostasis due to loss or dysfunction of insulin-producing beta cells. In this work, we characterize pancreatic islet development and function in zebrafish mutant for pdx1, a gene which in humans is linked to genetic forms of diabetes and is associated with increased susceptibility to Type 2 diabetes.
WHOLE BODY GLUCOSE MEASUREMENT:
Biochemical Assays
Glucose measurements were performed using the Amplex Red Glucose Assay Kit (Invitrogen), according to manufacturer’s instructions. Larval extracts were prepared by sonication in 200 ul of cold PBS. Single 5-week old fish were first homogenized followed by sonication in 500 ul cold PBS. Extracts were spun for 15 min, 12000 rpm at 4 °C to remove debris, and the supernatant was used immediately or stored aliquoted at –80 °C until the assay was performed. Standard curves were generated with every assay. Graphs represent data combined from at least 2 independent experiments. Glucose values were normalized to protein concentration of the extract, and are reported relative to the average control value. To measure blood glucose levels in adult zebrafish, fish were anesthetized and blood collected essentially as described45. Blood from the incision was directly applied to a Freestyle Lite glucose test strip, and glucose readings were obtained from the Freestyle Lite glucose meter (Abbott) as per manufacturer’s instructions.
