Category Archives: organic

L’Oreal is about to 3D print human skin — because you’re worth it

by Brigida42R Posted on May 18, 2015

It puts the lotion in the basket

L’Oreal is about to 3D print human skin — because you’re worth it

By on 18 May 2015 4:06 pmcommentsShare

Here’s some The Silence of the Lambs-level horror to ruin your day: One of the most popular cosmetics brands in the world grows human skin, and is actively researching technology to increase its production. Using samples donated by French plastic surgery patients, the cosmetics powerhouse L’Oreal already raises more than 54 square feet of skin per year to test its products, which provides an alternative to animal testing. And now, to help speed up production, the company is turning to 3D printing.

Bloomberg Business has the story:

L’Oreal needs human skin. Lots of it. That’s why the French cosmetics giant earlier this month announced that it’s partnering with bioprinting startup Organovo to figure out how to 3D print living, breathing derma that can be used to test products for toxicity and efficacy. “We’re the first beauty company Organovo has worked with,” says Guive Balooch, global vice president of L’Oreal’s tech incubator.

This isn’t L’Oreal’s first foray into skin production. Looking to avoid animal testing, the company started farming derma back in the 1980s. In Lyon, France, it runs lab facilities the size of three Olympic swimming pools, dedicated entirely to growing and analyzing human tissues.

Unlike the legendary French women who can chain smoke cigarettes, eat a pound of brie a week, and still not age a day past 25, I occasionally turn to cosmetics for a Bardot-esque complexion. (Best believe this quarter-French mademoiselle is starting to see wrinkles.) So thank you, people of France, for all your breast lifts and tummy tucks that made my flawless complexion possible! Mwah.

Source:
L’Oreal’s Plan to Start 3D Printing Human Skin

, Bloomberg Business.

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L’Oreal is about to 3D print human skin — because you’re worth it

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Grinning, Sparring, Losing: Mitt Romney’s Surreal Night Inside a Salt Lake City Boxing Ring.

by JeromeGott Posted on May 16, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Muhammad Ali’s winning formula for boxing was to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.” There was plenty of floating, but not much stinging, for former presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday night, during a two-round charity bout in Salt Lake City, against former five-time heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield.

Revealing some prime #grandpabod in bright red satin shorts (remember, he only ate organic on the campaign trail?), and sporting an “I can’t believe I’m doing this but WTF” grin, the former governor’s sparring skills just couldn’t cut it.

The Associated Press captured what’s been dubbed the “Quake on the Lake“:

Romney, 68, and Holyfield, 52, sparred, if you could call it that, for just two short rounds before Romney ran away from the boxer and threw in the towel, giving up a round early in the lighthearted fight that came amid several other fights by professional boxers and an auction.

The two barely threw any punches and largely just danced around, occasionally lightly jabbing each other in the midsection in what was much more of a comedic event than an actual bout.

Let’s be honest: Holyfield, who once famously lost part of his ear in a fight with Mike Tyson, could have knocked out the former governor of Massachusetts with a single punch. But the joyous thing, the meaningful thing, was that he tried. Please proceed, governor:

Romney landed at least one solid jab, it seems:

Kapow! Rick Bowmer/AP

Holyfield then took a fall to make things interesting:

In the end, a ring-side Anne Romney—who always has her boyfriend’s back—threw in the towel on Mitt’s behalf, and Holyfield emerged victorious:

The black-tie affair raised at least $1 million for Charity Vision, a Utah-based nonprofit that helps doctors perform surgeries for the blind in developing countries. That amount of money is apparently equivalent to Holyfield’s net worth, and 1/25 of Romney’s, according to Buzzfeed’s Tale of the Tape.

After the match, Holyfield apparently quipped to Romney: “You know what? You float like a bee and sting like a butterfly.”

And so everyone had an enjoyable time, especially Ann Romney:

Continued:  

Grinning, Sparring, Losing: Mitt Romney’s Surreal Night Inside a Salt Lake City Boxing Ring.

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These 3D maps of coral reefs are totally rad

by LatashiMaskell Posted on May 14, 2015

These 3D maps of coral reefs are totally rad

By on 14 May 2015commentsShare

We live in a time of strange contradictions: Many of us carry around highly sophisticated, GPS- and camera-equipped supercomputers just to play 2048 on the bus, while a lot of science is still limited by rudimentary tools and a lack of information. This is especially true for marine sciences (perhaps in part because water and electronics don’t always play well together). From Wired:

“It’s crazy how behind the times we are,” says Sly Lee, a former biological science technician for the US National Park Service and founder of the Hydrous, a science communication non-profit. “We can decode coral genomes, but we can’t accurately track how fast the corals are degrading.”

Part of the problem with keeping track of coral degradation is that we lack a good yardstick — how do you measure the size of an irregularly shaped, many-branched staghorn colony? How do you track the exact hue from healthy to bleached? At the moment, it usually involves a literal yardstick — scuba diving scientists use measuring tapes to survey huge patches of irregular coral.

So Lee is testing a new way to map individual coral colonies by their size, color, and texture, and create 3D models that scientists can examine cheaply in a lab. Last winter, Lee went to the Maldives — site of a recent large bleaching event — to test his new tool:

Lee dove with a waterproof camera to take nearly 200,000 images of the reefs from every angle. Then he uploaded the photos to Autodesk rendering software, stitching them together into a high-resolution model. Later this year, he’ll return to the same corals, then use the before-and-after visualizations to see exactly how they have fared.

Here’s a video of one table coral modeled in Lee’s software:

Once the software is online and openly accessible, anyone should be able to upload their coral footage to the system. So hello, waterproof casing, goodbye, guestimation.

Source:
3-D Mapping the World’s Corals to Track Their Health

, Wired.

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These 3D maps of coral reefs are totally rad

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Scientists will never build a perfect climate model, but that’s OK

by CasimiraShephar Posted on May 14, 2015

model problems

Scientists will never build a perfect climate model, but that’s OK

By on 14 May 2015commentsShare

When we talk about climate models, it’s all all “uncertainty” this and “insufficiency” that — as though there’s some perfect, comprehenisve model of planet earth to compare them to. But no one criticizes NASA for building spacecrafts that aren’t the Starship Enterprise, because they know that the Starship Enterprise is fictional. The same is true for climate models — that perfect simulation doesn’t exist.

This video from Motherboard helps explain why that is (while also informing us that NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies happens to be right behind the Seinfeld diner — a great factoid to tuck away for later!).

Here’s the bottom line: Climate models translate the natural world into math. As anyone who’s ever taken a physics class can tell you, translating even the simplest things into math is hard. I mean, do you guys remember having to calculate how fast that bowling ball was going when it reached the bottom of that hill? Or how high that baseball went when Bob threw it up in the air? Or what happened when those two blocks crashed into each other?

Well, climate models have to do that kind of thing but for pretty much all water and air, everywhere around the globe, all at once. Not only is that hard, it’s literally impossible to do with perfect accuracy. Uncertainties are — and always will be — part of the deal.

We applaud NASA just for building spacecrafts in the first place, because holy shit, space flight is real! The same should be true for climate models. That perfect simulation is a fantasy, so let’s be realistic and appreciate what we have, because holy shit, we can simulate the world!

Oh, and for the record: Climate models are not responsible for forecasting local weather, so give it a rest, Glenn Beck:

Source:
The Most Important Models in the World

, Motherboard.

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Scientists will never build a perfect climate model, but that’s OK

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Important Advice From the CDC: Don’t Poop in the Pool

by MelvaGAXXhggqsn Posted on May 14, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Thursday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a very important message for anyone planning to swim this summer: Don’t poop in the pool. Also, try not to be in a pool where someone else has pooped. At least, if you can avoid it, don’t swim with your mouth open in a pool if you, or someone else, has pooped nearby.

These are just a few of the ways you can try to avoid getting norovirus—a nasty and highly contagious stomach virus that sometimes makes its way onto cruise ships—as you enjoy all sorts of aquatic activities that are not limited to pools. Lakes have high levels of poop-related-risks it seems, as the CDC announcement describes how some people in Oregon swam in a lake last year and ended up getting the virus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea. The outbreak ended up sickening 70 people, some of whom didn’t even swim in the lake (state health officials found, however, that swimmers were over twice as likely to get sick).

Other important tips include not peeing in the water, not vomiting in the water, and maybe skipping swimming that day if there’s a chance you might do any of those things.

This important message comes in honor of Healthy and Safe Swimming week and is mostly geared toward children (or parents of children) who are not only more at risk for norovirus but are also prime suspects of doing things in water that one shouldn’t do. They also, apparently, are bad at swimming with their mouths closed. Per the CDC’s press release:

“Children are prime targets for norovirus and other germs that can live in lakes and swimming pools because they’re so much more likely to get the water in their mouths,” said Michael Beach, Ph.D, the CDC’s associate director for healthy water. “Keeping germs out of the water in the first place is key to keeping everyone healthy and helping to keep the places we swim open all summer.”

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Important Advice From the CDC: Don’t Poop in the Pool

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House Republicans do their part to commemorate National Women’s Health Week

by KaiWfbuikghxkh Posted on May 14, 2015

House Republicans do their part to commemorate National Women’s Health Week

By on 14 May 2015commentsShare

For National Women’s Health Week, we’re highlighting women’s health issues in the United States.

Yesterday, after years of Republicans threatening to do so, the House of Representatives voted to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The important thing to remember about abortions is that they are not pleasant things. One does not get an abortion, especially a late-term abortion, for the hell of it — one gets an abortion because she has decided that undergoing an emotionally trying and painful procedure has greater benefits to both her and the fetus than carrying the baby to term.

This particular bill targets women who are most in need, as women who are likely to seek later-term abortions are usually young and low-income. Data from the Guttmacher Institute indicates that nearly 60 percent of women were forced to delay their abortions due to financial and logistical constraints, and 58 percent of women wished they had undergone the procedure earlier in their pregnancy.

From The New York Times:

Representatives Diana DeGette of Colorado and Louise M. Slaughter of New York, Democrats who are the chairwomen of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, said the bill was another attempt by Republicans to erect barriers to medical care for women.

Prohibiting most abortions 20 weeks after fertilization would run counter to the Supreme Court’s standard of fetal viability, which is generally put at 22 to 24 weeks after fertilization.

“Every woman has a constitutional right to make health care choices in the manner she sees fit, and everyone in America should see this cynical attempt to seize control from women for what it is,” Ms. DeGette and Ms. Slaughter said in a statement on Tuesday.

Let’s get this straight: Republicans want to restrict abortions, but they also want to make it harder for women to access birth control. There are few things more dystopian than a state where women are left powerless to make their own reproductive decisions, but at least there’s a glimmer of hope: In January, the White House stated that President Obama would veto a bill like this one. Uteruses around the country salute you, Obama! (No, not like that.)

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House Republicans do their part to commemorate National Women’s Health Week

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Texas doesn’t give a damn about your reproductive rights

by ChantalBaile Posted on May 13, 2015

Texas doesn’t give a damn about your reproductive rights

By on 13 May 2015commentsShare

For National Women’s Health Week, we’ll be highlighting women’s health issues in the United States.

Hello! We’re here with your daily reminder that reproductive rights remain regularly challenged here in the United States, which we often mistakenly consider one of the most advanced countries in the world. And also that, as a country made up of very different states that are each uniquely weird and awful in their own ways, the experience of trying to get reproductive healthcare as a woman in America is wildly variable.

Which brings us to Texas. To start: Allow me say that it’s so easy to shit on Texas that I just refuse to engage in it on principle. Fine — it’s the state that brought us both the Bushes and Ashlee Simpson. But it’s also home to many people who are forced to live with its terrible policies without having any say in them, so I’m not going to insult them by lumping them in with a bunch of old crotchety dunderheads in Austin.

A recent study from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that 55 percent of women surveyed across the state encountered some sort of barrier to accessing reproductive healthcare. That’s the majority of women in one of the most populous states in the country.

From the Texas Tribune:

Affordability, insurance issues and a lack of nearby providers were among the top barriers women reported facing between 2011 and 2014, according to the study, which included 779 women between the ages of 18 and 49. And young, low-income women with less education — particularly Spanish-speaking Hispanic women who were born in Mexico — faced the most barriers to reproductive services.

And today, as a cherry on top of the Hell Sundae that is the Texas woman’s experience of trying to exercise her reproductive rights, a bill that would restrict minors’ and immigrants’ access to abortions will be put to the vote in the Texas House of Representatives. This bill would further complicate and lengthen the already nightmarish process of attempting to get an abortion without parental consent.

From Houston Press:

Under [this] bill, girls seeking an abortion would have to prove “mental or emotional injury to a child that results in an observable and material impairment in the child’s growth, development, or psychological functioning,” and, “physical injury that results in substantial harm from physical injury to the child.

“Quite literally, this would require some teenage girls to be beaten before they can obtain an abortion,” [Susan] Hays [legal director for Jane’s Due Process] says.

The bill also requires the provision of a government ID to obtain an abortion.

Let’s all take a moment for Texas, and allow Tami Taylor* to comfort us with her marvelous voice, magical hair, and monumental wisdom:

*Connie Britton, the actress who played Tami Taylor on Friday Night Lights, is an outspoken supporter of reproductive rights in Texas.

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Texas doesn’t give a damn about your reproductive rights

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In search of artificial muscles, scientists have turned to onions

by KatrinaDudley Posted on May 13, 2015

In search of artificial muscles, scientists have turned to onions

By on 13 May 2015commentsShare

Researchers in Taiwan were trying to build an artificial muscle, when suddenly they realized: “Wait a second, why don’t we just use gold-plated onion skin?” Best. Eureka. Moment. Ever.

OK, it probably didn’t happen quite like that. But they were trying to create an artificial muscle, and they did find that onion skin proved to be a pretty decent alternative — and an eco-friendly one at that. Here’s more from The Verge:

The muscle is built on the epidermis of the onion, the filmy layer underneath the outer shell. Like real muscles, that film is both stretchy and responsive to electricity, thanks to the single-layered lattice structure of its cells. Still, getting the film to work as a muscle took a lot of preparation. The team freeze-dried the skin to remove internal water and dipped it in dilute sulfuric acid to make the skin more elastic. Then the onion skin was dipped in two layers of gold and an electrode was attached.

Scientists have been trying to build artificial muscles for a while, but — surprise! — living tissue is complicated and awesome and really difficult to replicate (kudos, evolution). More specifically, it’s hard to fabricate a soft, robotic muscle that can both bend and contract/elongate at the same time.

The researchers in Taiwan were trying to do this using polymers, when they realized that nature already provided the very kind of material they were trying to create. They reported their discovery in the journal Applied Physics Letters:

The plant epidermal cells are cheap and easy to obtain, at no cost to the environment. Due to the diversity of plants and their cell structures, discovering the use of natural structures in engineering is of interest.

To test their onion muscle, the researchers put two together to form a pair of tweezers and then used those gold-plated onion tweezers to pick up a cotton ball, making us all regret our career choices.

This research is all part of a larger field of research called soft robotics, which is exactly what it sounds like. Scientists in the field want to build robots that are more lifelike. That is, soft and squishy — you know, like us. What could go wrong? Seriously, though, soft hardware (software? squishware?) could do great things for the world of medical implants.

If you want to see some early-stage soft robots, check out this creepy little sucker from Harvard:

Or this disturbing octopus arm from Italy:

Source:
This new artificial muscle is made from gold-plated onion skin

, The Verge.

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In search of artificial muscles, scientists have turned to onions

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It’s time to panic. Olives are in big trouble

by ukiczp43 Posted on May 13, 2015

It’s time to panic. Olives are in big trouble

By on 13 May 2015commentsShare

It’s a hard time to be an olive. After a rash of terrible weather in 2014 and an actual plague of fruit flies, the latest blight to hit the iconic, enigmatic fruit is an actual blight. From the New York Times:

“It is devastating,” said Enzo Manni, the director of ACLI-Racale, an olive cooperative in the heart of the outbreak area. “It is apocalyptic. I compare it to an earthquake.”

Today, scientists estimate that one million olive trees in the peninsula, known as the Salento, are infected with the bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, a figure that could rise rapidly.

The bacterium is an invasive species that has already taken down citrus trees in Brazil and vineyards in California. The omnivorous pest is now eating its way through the olive-rich “heel” of Italy, which means the rest of us will have a harder time doing so. Olives, like California’s much maligned almond trees, are slow-growing, which means they are an expensive investment up front.

In southern Salento, growers are alarmed but determined to learn how to adapt to the presence of the bacterium. It takes seven years or longer for a new tree to begin producing olives, and farmers were initially furious at reports that the European Commission wanted to cut down a million or more trees, and possibly even healthy plants in proximity.

Growers note that about 10 percent of all olive trees in the southern part of the province are infected — meaning that about 10 million trees are still thought to be healthy.

This is a major threat to the way of life of many families that have been farming olives for generations, but it’s also bad news for anyone who likes to eat well, without putting an undue burden on the planet.

Olive oil is delicious, drinkable, liquid gold — it is also vegan. I firmly believe it is one of the major reasons that Italians get away with eating so many plants (yes, pasta counts) and relatively little meat. When you can eat bread sopped in the ambrosial, green nectar of the gods, as far as I’m concerned, dinner is served.

Source:
Fear of Ruin as Disease Takes Hold of Italy’s Olive Trees

, New York Times.

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It’s time to panic. Olives are in big trouble

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This weird plant might be the future of Alaskan agriculture

by TammaraRuggieri Posted on May 12, 2015

This weird plant might be the future of Alaskan agriculture

By on 12 May 2015commentsShare

Alaska, the Last Frontier, is not known for its balmy climate or productive agricultural scene. But one new plant on the scene might be shaking up the state:

“I tried killing it—you can’t kill it. That’s my kind of plant,” says [Al] Poindexter. “It can go weeks without water. Moose don’t eat it, rabbits don’t eat it, weather doesn’t seem to bother it. It’s a real easy plant to grow.”

This is Rhodiola rosea—golden root, rose root—a succulent that was used for centuries as folk medicine and once considered something of a Soviet military secret. Decades ago, the Soviets realized that Rhodiola could boost energy and help manage stress. These days, a small group of Alaskan farmers are hoping that it could enter the pantheon of plants (coffee, chocolate, coca) whose powers people take seriously—and, along the way, become Alaska’s most valuable crop

The plant has been known in scientific circles since the 18th century, when Carl Linnaeus named it. Soviet scientists tried to keep it under wraps during the Cold War, using it to  buck up their soldiers and athletes, even the cosmonauts. And while I don’t know what a Rhodiola bar would taste like, nor whether it would help me climb flights of stairs without huffing, I do know that fitting the crop to its climate sounds pretty sensible.

“It’s actually an environment that the plant wants to grow in, as opposed to everything else we grow in Alaska,” says Stephen Brown, a professor and district agriculture agent at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. “It’ll grow in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. It wants our long days. It’s already coming up out of the ground—and the ground’s still frozen.”

It might not be the Fertile Crescent when it comes to corn and potatoes, but south-central Alaska just might be the cradle of the coming Rhodiola renaissance.

Source:
THE SOVIET MILITARY SECRET THAT COULD BECOME ALASKA’S MOST VALUABLE CROP

, Atlas Obscura.

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This weird plant might be the future of Alaskan agriculture

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