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Imagine Reading by the Light of a Plant …
That’s just what Antony Evans and the team behind the Glowing Plant Kickstarter have in mind. And you can help them get there (and get your own glowing plant in return!)
Molecular biologists have used bioluminescence as a laboratory technique for decades. This light-producing reaction (different from the fluorescence given off by jellyfish and other “glowing” organisms like the GFP-labeled tobacco plant above) is stunningly simple, using proteins isolated from fireflies and glow-worms to create light using only oxygen and a molecule called luciferin. I’ve done it myself dozens of times, it’s pretty cool.
Modern synthetic biology techniques give us the power to insert this gene into the genome of almost any organism whose genes we can manipulate. Arabidopsis thaliana, the so-called plant “model organism” is one of those. Using special plant-specific bacteria, we can insert genes into the tiny weed at will. Since every living thing expresses RNA and protein using the same genetic code, all Evans and his team need to do is tweak the precise DNA sequence, letter by letter, to make it work as efficiently in plants as it does in other organisms. It’s harder than it sounds, of course, but well within the realm of the possible.
Their fundraising campaign has already been so successful that they have expanded their goal to making a glowing rose! I’d buy that for a dollar. Visit their Kickstarter to learn more and to get your name on the list for a glowing plant. The Glowing Plant project is also on Tumblr, so go give them some love and follow for more news.
These green-thumbed bio-hackers are imagining a world without streetlights, where we read without a light on our nightstand but instead a glowing plant in our room. I’d like to see that happen.
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Road Trip Documentary!
At 20 years old, Shane Burcaw is taking a trip away from his parents for the first time.
We’ve been waiting to get all the details in order before announcing this, but I’m stoked to tell you that we are trying to have a full-length documentary made about the road trip that we’re taking at the end of the month!
I’m going to give it to you straight: our ability to have this documentary made comes down to raising enough money to support the project. Raising the funds over the next two weeks is literally one of the biggest challenges I’ve ever faced, but I’m going to throw everything my tiny velociraptor body has into it because I know this opportunity is once in a lifetime. There are over 350,000 of you that follow me. If each of you shared this link we would reach our goal in no time.
Thank you so much for donating and sharing! I can’t wait to get on the road. It’s gonna be fucking nuts! -
nybg:
Exciting carnivorous plant news everybody! An unusual aquatic bladderwort last seen on the Isle of Man in 1998 has been rediscovered in a pond. The plant lives in very nutrient poor conditions, and makes up for it by using small sacks (the bladder in the name) to capture tiny aquatic invertebrates like water fleas. The plant is also common to the other British Isles. Always fun to get introduced to a new carnivorous plant though, isn’t it? ~AR
(via BBC News - Carnivorous plant rediscovered in the Isle of Man)
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Episode Extra: A Flower’s Electric Field
In the “Electric Buzzaloo” episode I did on YouTube, I showed you not only how bees find flowers using UV vision, but also mentioned that they can sense a flower’s electric field. What does that look like?
This image captures the slightly negative electric charge that most flowers carry since they’re literally grounded. After being visited by one bee, it sheds some of that negative buzz to the positively-charged pollinator. If another bee comes along, it won’t be attracted to the less charged (and less nectar-filled) flower.
This maximizes a bee’s chances of visiting fresh flowers and not wasting their time at an empty well. Read more at Nature News.
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Inside the Gorgeous Guts of Termites
Biologist Kevin Carpenter has a new exhibit at San Francisco’s Exploratorium featuring electron microscope images of various microbes (bacteria and protists) that live inside the guts of termites. Studying these wood-digesting bugs-within-bugs could help advance biofuel technologies and allow us to break down complex wood cellulose structures into usable carbon.
Plus, they’re pretty. Check out the full details at his website.
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Lytro Light Field Photography at the 2013 Orchid Show
nybg:
I received the Lytro camera yesterday at the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. I am interested in using it for photographing plant specimens that require broad depth of field, but I could not resist giving it a test drive at the 2013 Orchid Show.
Click the image to change the focal point. Double click to zoom in and out.
Submitted by Michael Bevens, Information Manager for Digitization, Herbarium
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“52 Forms of Fungi” knitted sculptural work by Leigh Martin
(via wnycradiolab)
Posted on April 18, 2013 via Of a small kingdom with 1,102 notes
Source: kingpin007
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![newsweek:
Hillary Clinton: Helping Women Isn’t Just a ‘Nice’ Thing to Do
[ed: Hillary Clinton came by Women in the World this morning and rocked the theater with this historical, powerful speech. We’ve transcribed the full thing below. Sorry if this is a Dashboard monster.]
Thank you so much. What a wonderful occasion for me to be back here, the fourth Women in the World conference I’ve been privileged to attend, introduced by the founder, creator, and my friend, Tina Brown. When one thinks about this annual conference, it really is intended to—and I believe has— focus attention on the global challenges facing women, from equal rights and education to human slavery, literacy, the power of the media and technology to affect change in women’s futures, and so much else. And for that I thank Tina and the great team that she has worked with in order to produce this conference and the effects it has created. It’s been such an honor to work with all of you over the years. Though it’s hard to see from up here out into the audience, I did see some faces and I know that this is an occasion for so many friends and colleagues to come together and take stock for where we stand and what more needs to be done in advancing the great unfinished business of the 21st century: advancing rights and opportunities for women and girls.
Now this is unfinished around the world, where too many women are still treated at best as second-class citizens, at worst as some kind of subhuman species. Those of you who were there last night saw that remarkable film that interviewed men primarily in Pakistan, talking very honestly about their intention to continue to control the women in their lives and their reach. But the business is still unfinished here in the United States, we have come so far together but there’s still work to be done.
Now, I have always believed that women are not victims, we are agents of change, we are drivers of progress, we are makers of peace – all we need is a fighting chance.
And that firm faith in the untapped potential of women at home and around the world has been at the heart of my work my entire life, from college to law school, from Arkansas to the White House to the Senate. And when I became Secretary of State, I was determined to weave this perspective even deeper into the fabric of American foreign policy.
But I knew to do that, I couldn’t just preach to the usual choir. We had to reach out. To men. To religious communities. To every partner we could find. We had to make the case to the whole world that creating opportunities for women and girls advances security and prosperity for everyone. So we relied on the empirical research that shows that when women participate in the economy, everyone benefits. When women participate in peace-making and peace-keeping, we are all safer and more secure. And when women participate in politics of their nations they can make a difference.
But as strong a case as we’ve made, too many otherwise thoughtful people continue to see the fortunes of women and girls as somehow separate from society at large. They nod, they smile and then relegate these issues once again to the sidelines. I have seen it over and over again, I have been kidded about it I have been ribbed, I have been challenged in board rooms and official offices across the world.
But fighting to give women and girls a fighting chance isn’t a nice thing to-do. It isn’t some luxury that we get to when we have time on our hands to spend doing that . This is a core imperative for every human being and every society. If we do not complete a campaign for women’s rights and opportunities the world we want to live in the country we all love and cherish will not be what it should be.
It’s no coincidence that so many of the countries that threaten regional and global peace are the very places where women and girls are deprived of dignity and opportunity. Think of the young women from northern Mali to Afghanistan whose schools have been destroyed. Or the girls across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia who have been condemned to child marriage. Or the refugees of the conflicts from eastern Congo to Syria who endure rape and deprivation as a weapon of war.
It is no coincidence that so many of the countries where the rule of law and democracy are struggling to take root are the same places where women and girls cannot participate as full and equal citizens. Like in Egypt, where women stood on the front lines of the revolution but are now being denied their seats at the table and face a rising tide of sexual violence.
It is no coincidence that so many of the countries making the leap from poverty to prosperity are places now grappling with how to empower women. I think it is one of the unanswered questions of the rest of this century to whether countries, like China and India, can sustain their growth and emerge as true global economic powers. Much of that depends on what happens to women and girls.
Read More](http://25.media.tumblr.com/143dfab4f5061899130fb842fea15c1e/tumblr_mkske9bS5q1qzs5cqo1_500.jpg)
Hillary Clinton: Helping Women Isn’t Just a ‘Nice’ Thing to Do
[ed: Hillary Clinton came by Women in the World this morning and rocked the theater with this historical, powerful speech. We’ve transcribed the full thing below. Sorry if this is a Dashboard monster.]
Thank you so much. What a wonderful occasion for me to be back here, the fourth Women in the World conference I’ve been privileged to attend, introduced by the founder, creator, and my friend, Tina Brown. When one thinks about this annual conference, it really is intended to—and I believe has— focus attention on the global challenges facing women, from equal rights and education to human slavery, literacy, the power of the media and technology to affect change in women’s futures, and so much else. And for that I thank Tina and the great team that she has worked with in order to produce this conference and the effects it has created. It’s been such an honor to work with all of you over the years. Though it’s hard to see from up here out into the audience, I did see some faces and I know that this is an occasion for so many friends and colleagues to come together and take stock for where we stand and what more needs to be done in advancing the great unfinished business of the 21st century: advancing rights and opportunities for women and girls.
Now this is unfinished around the world, where too many women are still treated at best as second-class citizens, at worst as some kind of subhuman species. Those of you who were there last night saw that remarkable film that interviewed men primarily in Pakistan, talking very honestly about their intention to continue to control the women in their lives and their reach. But the business is still unfinished here in the United States, we have come so far together but there’s still work to be done.
Now, I have always believed that women are not victims, we are agents of change, we are drivers of progress, we are makers of peace – all we need is a fighting chance.
And that firm faith in the untapped potential of women at home and around the world has been at the heart of my work my entire life, from college to law school, from Arkansas to the White House to the Senate. And when I became Secretary of State, I was determined to weave this perspective even deeper into the fabric of American foreign policy.
But I knew to do that, I couldn’t just preach to the usual choir. We had to reach out. To men. To religious communities. To every partner we could find. We had to make the case to the whole world that creating opportunities for women and girls advances security and prosperity for everyone. So we relied on the empirical research that shows that when women participate in the economy, everyone benefits. When women participate in peace-making and peace-keeping, we are all safer and more secure. And when women participate in politics of their nations they can make a difference.
But as strong a case as we’ve made, too many otherwise thoughtful people continue to see the fortunes of women and girls as somehow separate from society at large. They nod, they smile and then relegate these issues once again to the sidelines. I have seen it over and over again, I have been kidded about it I have been ribbed, I have been challenged in board rooms and official offices across the world.
But fighting to give women and girls a fighting chance isn’t a nice thing to-do. It isn’t some luxury that we get to when we have time on our hands to spend doing that . This is a core imperative for every human being and every society. If we do not complete a campaign for women’s rights and opportunities the world we want to live in the country we all love and cherish will not be what it should be.
It’s no coincidence that so many of the countries that threaten regional and global peace are the very places where women and girls are deprived of dignity and opportunity. Think of the young women from northern Mali to Afghanistan whose schools have been destroyed. Or the girls across Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia who have been condemned to child marriage. Or the refugees of the conflicts from eastern Congo to Syria who endure rape and deprivation as a weapon of war.
It is no coincidence that so many of the countries where the rule of law and democracy are struggling to take root are the same places where women and girls cannot participate as full and equal citizens. Like in Egypt, where women stood on the front lines of the revolution but are now being denied their seats at the table and face a rising tide of sexual violence.
It is no coincidence that so many of the countries making the leap from poverty to prosperity are places now grappling with how to empower women. I think it is one of the unanswered questions of the rest of this century to whether countries, like China and India, can sustain their growth and emerge as true global economic powers. Much of that depends on what happens to women and girls.
(via coolchicksfromhistory)
Posted on April 5, 2013 via Newsweek with 1,211 notes
Source: newsweek
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