New header “Look Up” in honor of the space spies who made an awesome, new discovery last week.

Remember when like, waaaay back in the beginning of Novemember 2011, when we all were pretty sure the Milky Way looked like this?

Surprise!

It really looks like this:

“What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic centre,” said Doug Finkbeiner, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who first recognised the feature. “We don’t fully understand their nature or origin…”

When the leader of the Harvard team responsible for the discovery is reduced to an elementary summary like this:

“They’re big,” said Doug Finkbeiner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, leader of the team that discovered them; the New York Times draws an analogy to Jabba the Hut, and “Wow,” is what David Spergel, an astrophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the work had to say…You know something jaw dropping has happened.

50,000 LIGHT YEARS OF HOT PINK. Almost as big as the entire galaxy, but completely unsuspected until now. If this doesn’t make us regret the decision to cancel our radical shuttle program, nothing will.

All images and videos from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Tiny hairs on this child’s hands and feet allow it to climb the door jamb in its native yuppie apartment.

…am fascinated by the idea that the earth is a minor planet in our galaxy “floating” in a universe full of galaxies.

The coup of science, engineering, technology and imagination that made the below photo of the galaxy possible = pretty good work.

Still smiling, one month later.

The children of DC are safer without Cheney’s dark shadow circling the sky. Although, baby calves thoughout rural Montana should be nervous come January, cause Cheney’s supply of fresh baby hearts is going bankrupt …this is the only recession that will effect him.

Anyway, I don’t care how broke we are as long as those “conspirators, card sharks, double-crossers, and secret betrayers of their own people” leave Washington.

Amen.

PS. I don’t remember how I found this painting from Africa, but it is super bad.

The bottle-collection-turned-building started in 1984, when the monks used them to decorate their shelters. The shiny building material attracted more people to donate more bottles, until eventually they had enough to build the temple standing today. Bottle caps are also integrated as decorative mosaic murals. Going beyond use of glass as a sustainable building material, the bottle bricks don’t fade, let natural light into the space and are surprisingly easy to maintain. So if you’re looking to find Nirvana in a bottle, you might want to consider making a stop at the Wat Pa Maha Kaew Temple.

Nothing like running into a monk to make you realize you are being a whiny bitch.

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An idiolect is a variety of a language unique to an individual. It is manifested by patterns of word selection and grammar, or words, phrases, idioms, or pronunciations that are unique to that individual. Every individual has an idiolect; the grouping of words and phrases is unique, rather than an individual using specific words that nobody else uses. An idiolect can easily evolve into an ecolect—a dialect variant specific to a household.

If you want to argue about it, go here. Personally, I’m off the Stanford Sauce.

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For the few things I still use batteries for, this would save me time, money and waste. Chargeable in any USB port, flip the USBCELL lid down and use as a standard AA battery over and over.

by

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The history of origata, the art of carefully folding gifts in decorative paper, will take you to Japan, 1336. Originally developed to wrap decorative fans or kelp in handmade paper, correctly folded origata can tell you about the relationship between the sender and receiver or the event the gift forecasts.

The Origata Design Institute honors the legacy of origata by resurrecting and reinventing traditional folding techniques.

I have to say, this innovation made sense to me immediately when I saw it. And it priced at only 5 Euros! This is roughly $1500 USD these days, but still. You all know those cell phone cords piled on the floor or looped across the room are hazardous eyesores.

Go get you one hombre!

via popflower.

Rat heart, stripped of cells = ghost rat heart

Dr. Doris A. Taylor of the University of Minnesota did some pretty smart science. In trying to solve the age old how-to of human organ generation, she decided tissue generation, not cell replication, was the root problem. So, she refocused her energy on the difficulty of recreating the 3D structure of the heart - a sticky ham due to the intricate nature the heart’s framework. The solution?

Dr. Taylor and her team washed harvested dead rat hearts, leaving the framework of arteries and valves intact. Next, using the expired heart as a scaffolding, the team injected newborn baby rat heart cells and simulated blood pressure. Within two weeks, they had a beating, electrical impulse conducting, blood pumping zombie rat heart.

Tissue engineers all over their world seem to be thunking their collective forehead at the simple elegance of Dr. Taylor’s solution. Seeding an organ with cells from the recipient helps resolve the issue of implanted organs being rejected by the recipient’s immune system. The ability to use the organs of cadavers as scaffolds for new, viable organs - a coup for transplant doctors, patients and B movie screen writers worldwide.

The implications for humans? Well, first up against the wall are the pigs of the world. Their heart resembles a human heart and, like rats, they are readily available. The next step is to get the heart to pump enough blood to support a body as large as a pig - or human. In this New York Times article, Todd N. McAllister of Cytograft Tissue Engineering in Novato, Calif., had this to say to the New York Times about exporting this advance to humans and other human organs:

The principal problem in escalating it to humans is one of scale, not of cell biology, and that is an easier problem to solve potentially.

So now, instead of inventing the wheel, they just need to make it haul the wagon. Finally, a use for all that science!

“It looks like a ghost heart. And it feels a little like jello.”

Doris Taylor

Amid the many awards Dr. Taylor will receive for her discovery, she seems a shoe-in for the infamous Least Scientific Analogy of the Year. “It looks like what? Ah yes. The old Ghost Heart.” (Seriously though, it does look awesomely spooky–I’m on the zombie rat heart bus).