papemel

muirgilsdream:

This very primitive-but-functional camera is from a curious & interesting website that features hand-fabricated contraptions, tools & what-nots, made from pre-existing parts. Check it out.

http://www.kk.org/streetuse/archives/gizmos/

cryonicsfantastical:

I read an article in Popular science magazine on how we might “reengineer ourselves to cope with effects of climate change.” This is based on the idea that we redesign humans to reduce the burden we place upon the planet. It goes on to give a few examples such as genetically introducing the shortness gene into embryos; smaller people = smaller carbon footprint. Another example was to develop drugs that induced meat allergies to make us less reliant on carbon heavy beef. My favourite was the artificial organ kit made by the design firm Takram. This kit included “nasal and excretory systems” that allow a person to survive on just one litre of water a day.

These examples do raise an interesting theory about whether humans could engineer themselves to adapt to an ever-warming world.

 

Source: Popular scientist magazine: October 2012

Source:http://www.takram.com/?page_id=699

kem-ist:

Good day of green chemistry research! The crazy photo you see above (also note the awesome emerald color of my nickle (II) chloride hexahydrate and aluminum chloride hexahydrate) is my emerald solution being added drop wise into a three neck 1000 mL round bottom flask, argon being flush through the RBF (the right most neck) and a pH electrode on the left most neck— I’m using that to measure the pH, I’m adjusting it to be around 8 with a 7M solution of NaOH.

If it looks like a pain to set up, you’re right. Especially since I need to constantly add the NaOH (originally I was using 1 M, but it hardly altered the pH… I don’t know what the hell the guys in the literature were doing). I had a 500 mL RBF at first, but I had to switch it over since the amount of NaOH I was adding would nearly overflow the glassware.

It’s stirring overnight now. In the morning, I’m going to filter and then freeze dry it (my professor and the literature called this lyophilization) and then I’ll have a new batch of tungstate catalyst! I talked about the tungstate catalyst in and earlier blog of mine.

In the hour of time I had after finishing the reaction, I actually tried doing something random with a piece of literature I had stumbled across on bromination. It seemed to give an interesting result, as the TLC plate I ran showed that all of my reagent had been used up! I hadn’t gotten that result before. It was quite exciting, especially since I did the experiment on a whim from a random article I came across.

thecakebar:

Vintage Cookies Tutorial! (tutorial)