Bug be gone bedding

Based on this eighty thousand year old idea, I think they should consider marketing bedbug-repellent mattresses for those concerned about such pests. The sedges and rushes could be harvested sustainably and could be affixed to the mattress using some kind of mesh.

Mirror, mirror

Day 294,
originally uploaded by JimmyMac210.

When I heard a while ago that a team of researchers had expanded the genetic code by altering the subcellular machinery used to synthesize proteins I thought this would be big all over the mainstream media. I was wrong, however, and I have heard nary a peep on how this could lead to all sorts of interesting mutant enzymes and bizarre polypeptides by substituting other things in place of the twenty-two amino acids that naturally occur on Earth.

I would like to propose a slightly different hack made possible with the expanded vocabulary: mirror image proteins. We could designate twenty-two of the four base pair sequences with mirror-reversed optical isomers of the standard amino acids, generate the appropriate mRNA sequence to assemble them in exactly the same way as proteins we already know, and have the ribosomes and tRNA machinery start to produce these backward polypeptides. I would guess that these would fold in exactly the same way as the conventional proteins, only reversed, with the left-handed alpha helices and other structural elements matching up just as they should. Going further, we could take the entire genome of an organism and rewrite it using our new four base pair language, provide it with the wrong-handed nutrients needed, and have it generate all the proteins making up that creature but completely reversed. It would take a little bit of work to engineer the mirror cells needed to house this machinery, but given enough time I am sure it could be done. We would start with microbes and work our way up to larger animals and plants once we had everything in place.

In the end, we would have a completely mirror-reversed organism relying on the alternate coding in order to grow and reproduce. If we were to eat that organism, we would not be able to digest it very well at all and so would be inherently low in calories. But just maybe it might taste wonderful.

In Vitro

p1=1; p2=1; So let it be written. So let it be done.,
originally uploaded by Josh Sommers.

I would like to see a chess set with a cell biology theme.

The board would be clear glass, alternately clear and frosted, with shallow wells in each square. You could put liquid or agar gel in the wells if you were really hard-core.

These would be the pieces:

King	Neuron
Queen	Oocyte
Rook	Osteocyte
Bishop	Epithelium
Knight	White blood cell
Pawn	Stem cell

I think they could be sculpted in the shape of the corresponding cell, and visually the size of the pieces would help clue in the viewer as to the role in gameplay. Or else they could be in little sealed cuvettes shaped like the old Staunton set, etched with the type of cell contained inside. In either case, maybe one side could depict normal cells and the other side would be malignancies.

This is the set that would have worked really well in the Bergman movie.

The most ironically named species ever

Taxidermy Mouse,
originally uploaded by Vanderlin.

was the Indefatigable Galapagos Mouse.

Some thoughts while sorting my sock drawer

1. A pair of socks I found in a sort of Paisley motif made me think that someone should produce clothing with actual protista shapes in the design. That way I could be styling at work with a pair of socks with an attractive Naegleria motif.


2. Instead of video games where young people shoot people up or run them over or whatever, how about a nice sock drawer simulator where you have to pair up the matching patterns as efficiently as possible? There could be some socks with designs not found in real life, such as animated weaves, luminous thread, flaming toes, or whatever the graphic designer dreams up. I think this would be a fine way to inculcate important life skills to the next generation.


3. I ended up with some leftovers which lost their mates. Thus, "All we like socks have gone astray." (via)

Not so intelligent design

The second item on this list of facts about thirst (broken link) makes me even more convinced that the design of human beings is poorly optimized. Consider that one can go only a few days without taking in water, and it would seem as if this would be a high priority item for a designer to get right. Why wouldn't dehydration make us thirsty automatically, instead of making us hungry or tired or forgetful? Even I as designer, non-omniscient as I am, would have taken some care to get that basic drive right before going on to the rest of the creature.

On the other hand, evolution skeptics would cite the same item to point out that if human ancestors developed in the relatively dry African savannah, it would seem as if natural selection ought rightly to have cleared out any individuals who were apt to misidentify the need for seeking out a water hole. Humans who originated in a place with four wholesome rivers, in present-day Iraq might be expected to be more casual about decent hydration. Fallen mankind outside of Eden just inherited a design that was meant for a quite different setting.

All I know is that it's time for a cup of tea while I ponder human shortcomings.

For the den

Mounted Tyrannosaur head (broken link). Good, but I think I might prefer a mounted grey instead.

I saw this edgy biohazard-themed laundry bag at Realm Dekor and thought that while this was cool (along with their shower curtain and bath towels, they really should have pushed it a smidge further and put the crab-symbol thingy on other household items.

Barware:



Tableware:



Major appliances:



(I thought the bright red would be a nice touch as well.) You could either intend it ironically, or as an actual service to your houseguests. One also might want to accessorize and expand on the theme with a nice set of

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Tickle my bones

You may not import a piano into this country if the keys are made of non-antique ivory, a measure which helps to protect the dwindling populations of ivory-bearing animals.

Xylophone,
originally uploaded by woxy.

Steinway and other piano makers thus use synthetic material to cover their keys, something which I am sure grieves many an old-fashioned music lover.

But now does technology come to the rescue? You can already arrange to have a laboratory produce rings cultured from your own bone:

When you think about it for a while, it’s like ivory but more ethical, and the material has never been part of Harriet, just grown from her code taken from her body.

Well, pretty close - ivory comes from teeth, not bones, but they're both composed of the mineral apatite, and some craftsmen do use beef bone to cover keyboards.

So what could be better than to own a piano where the keys are covered in your own bone? I can only think of one instrument possibly cooler in this morbid way: a xylophone constructed of cultured strips of the player's bone. (I would rather call it instead an osteophone but that name seems to have been already usurped.)

It would be the perfect instrument on which to perform the Danse Macabre or perhaps some Tom Waits.

Gift idea #3: Brains

Can I Pick Your Brain?,
originally uploaded by Nick Nick1.

In this information-heavy culture, it is rare that anyone would pass up any opportunity to boost the ability to deal with the complications of the world. Your thoughtfulness will surely be remembered for years and years to come when you give the gift of brain. Even if they are only sheep brains (try as I might, I was unable to locate a reputable establishment selling the Homo sapiens variety), this formalin-preserved item is still chock-full of folds and neurons and those other kinds of things which make your gift recipient uniquely human. Or conscious. Or whatever they happen to be.

You may want to pick up extra brains, just to have on hand for special situations other than gift-giving.

Gift idea #2: Extraterrestrial life

Esquel,
originally uploaded by Bistrosavage.

According to CBC News: A meteorite that crashed in northwest Canada almost seven years ago might have been able to host the very earliest life forms. And yet you can buy chunks of planetoid over on eBay with little trouble at all. Wouldn't any gift recipient be thrilled to be the first to own a sample of a completely unknown (and possibly virulent) microscopic life-form?

As further proof, I think this etched bit of meteorite (broken link) looks like the inside of a Borg ship on Star Trek.

Achoo

There are times and places when I really hate having to sneeze: driving in heavy traffic, while cutting up food that I'm cooking, that sort of thing. I hope that someone somewhere is working on a way to override the sneeze reflex at least temporarily, for times when one is performing a task which one cannot afford to have interrupted.

From what I read on the net, the reflex arc for sneezing and coughing goes through the medulla oblongata and back to the musculature responsible for breathing. If we could put a cutoff switch somewhere in there, whether electrical, chemical, or physical, we should be able to affect the reflex. Alternatively, if someone had this installed and threw the switch hard in the opposite direction, we would have artificial snuff, which might also have its uses.

I can see that the military would be interested in this, thinking of all those scenes in the movie when some spy or scout is skulking around in a clandestine manner, and then his nose begins to twitch, and before you know it, the foe knows that someone is sneaking around, and things go bad.

I probably wouldn't want to turn off the sneezing reflex entirely or for a long period of time, because I am sure it is there for a good survival reason. But I think in most situations if you could inhibit it for a half hour or so that would probably be enough.