Largest Batch Of Earth-size, Habitable Zone Planets

In one of the most hostile regions known to humankind, conservationists unearthed an ice-covered fruitcake they believe once belonged to the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, the New Zealand-based Antarctic Heritage Trust said this past week.

The age of the fruitcake: 106 years old.

A program manager said it was in “excellent condition.”

And the trust said it smelled “almost” edible.

The cake, dating to the Cape Adare-based Northern Party of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition (1910-13), was found in Antarctica’s oldest building, which was constructed by a Norwegian explorer’s team in 1899 and used by Scott’s team in 1911, the trust said.

(Read more at NYT)

Mae’s Millinery Shop

Photo: Photograph of Mae Reeves and a group of women standing on stairs, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from Mae Reeves and her children, Donna Limerick and William Mincey, Jr.

African American women have been wearing fancy hats for generations to church. In 1940, Mae Reeves started Mae’s Millinery Shop in 1940 in Philadelphia, PA with a $500 bank loan. The shop stayed open until 1997 and helped dress some of the most famous African American women in the country, including iconic singers Marian Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne. 

Reeves was known for making all of her customers feel welcomed and special, whether they were domestic workers, professional women, or socialites from Philadelphia’s affluent suburban Main Line. Customer’s at Mae’s would sit at her dressing table or on her settee, telling stories and sharing their troubles. 

Photo: Pink mushroom hat with flowers from Mae’s Millinery Shop, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. In our Power of Place exhibition, we recreated a portion of Reeves’ shop to showcase this African American tradition. Our shop includes its original red-neon sign, sewing machine, antique store furniture and hats. View artifacts from Mae’s Millinery Shop in our collection: s.si.edu/2oVlbFj 

My boyfriend, @inlove-with-a-spine, is very uninformed about Southeast Asian fruits (he only knows durian) which inspired me to find these online.

I’m pretty sure the names are different in other Southeast Asian countries, though.

From left to right (in Indonesian):

Duku

Jambu monyet

Jeruk

Lengkeng

Kedondong

Manggis

Rambutan

Nangka

Salak

Sawo

For you military history enthusiasts out there!

World War II in Southeast Asia as shown by this map, titled Japanese Centrifugal Offensive (offense?) and its clashes with other European forces occupying the region, December 1941 - April 1942.

In blue are notable major battles such as the Battles of Sunda Strait (February 28), Java Sea (February 27), Balikpapan (January 23 - 24), Lombok Straits (February 18 - 19). After the surprising Pearl Harbor attack the Japanese managed to curb the European defense over Southeast Asia, also in a surprising manner due to unpreparedness. 

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Laplace transform table. Source. (I’m obsessed. <3 And figured y’all would like this one, too!)

Molecule of the Day: Chloroform

Chloroform (CHCl3) is a colourless, dense liquid that is immiscible with water at room temperature and pressure. Popularised by movies and dramas, it is often cited as an incapacitating agent in popular culture.

Chloroform was used as a general anaesthetic due to its ability to depress the central nervous system, a property that was discovered in 1842. This produced a medically-induced coma, allowing surgeons to operate on patients without them feeling any pain.

However, chloroform was found to be associated with many side effects, such as vomiting, nausea, jaundice, depression of the respiratory system, liver necrosis and tumour formation, and its use was gradually superseded in the early 20th century by other anaesthetics and sedatives such as diethyl ether and hexobarbital respectively.

While chloroform has been implicated in several criminal cases, its use as an incapacitating agent is largely restricted to fiction; the usage of a chloroform-soaked fabric to knock a person out would take at least 5 minutes.

Chloroform is metabolised in the liver to form phosgene, which can react with DNA and proteins. Additionally, phosgene is hydrolysed to produced hydrochloric acid. These are believed to cause chloroform’s nephrotoxicity.

Chloroform is often used as a reagent to produce dichlorocarbene in situ via its reaction with a base like sodium tert-butoxide. This is a useful precursor to many derivatives. For example, the dichlorocarbene can be reacted with alkenes to form cyclopropanes, which can be difficult to synthesise otherwise.

Chloroform is industrially synthesised by the free radical chlorination of methane:

CH4 + 3 Cl2 –> CHCl3 + 3 HCl

It can also be synthesised by the reaction of acetone with sodium hypochlorite in bleach by successive aldol-like reactions:

This is great :) My favorite is proof by ghost reference, what is yours?

David Bowie (1947-2016) at Kyoto - Japan - 1980

Photos by Sukita Masayoshi 鋤田 正義

The History of Hiragana

In Japanese language, we have three types of letters, Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana.

Hiragana’s root is from old Ivrit and Palmyra letters.

The first column:  Phoenician alphabet The second column: Ostracon The third column: Old Aramaic The forth column: Imperial Aramaic The fifth column: Dead Sea scrolls The sixth column: Palmyrene script The seventh column: Palmyra

The first column: Hiragana The second column: Consonants The third column: Vowels The forth column: combined with the consonant and the vowel The fifth column: Sousho-tai (a hand writing style) The sixth column: Kanji