Next Week I’ll Give A Presentation On The Researchers Night At Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary

I Recently read About these amazing glow in the dark creatures in the newspapers and thought it was worth sharing 1. Saprobe Panellus Stipticus, Fungi:

Found in Asia, Australia, Europe and North America, the bio-luminescence emitted by the Saprobe fungi that grows on decaying wood...

Lab life

Constantly using acetone to wash your glassware which ends up making your nails super brittle 💔

Maple syrup could help fight bacterial infections, Canadian scientists find

Maple syrup is once again making headlines for being the rockstar condiment that every Canadian knows it is, but it’s not the culinary world that’s buzzing this time — it’s the medical world. Newly released research from McGill University in Montreal suggests that concentrated maple syrup extract may actually help fight bacterial infections, potentially reducing the need for antibiotics around the world. “Combining maple syrup extract with common antibiotics could increase the microbes’ susceptibility, leading to lower antibiotic usage,” reads a press release issued by the university Friday. “Overuse of antibiotics fuels the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, which has become a major public-health concern worldwide.”

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The Oldest Ancestor of Modern Birds Has Been Found in China

Ever since the birdlike dinosaur Archaeopteryx was first discovered in 1861, paleontologists have tried to decipher the evolutionary origins of modern birds—the only surviving descendants of the dinosaurs.

Now, paleontologists based out of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have reached a new milestone in this quest. The CAS team has discovered the oldest fossils from the Ornithuromorpha group of dinosaurs, the common ancestor of all modern bird species.

The two specimens date back 130 million years to the Early Cretaceous period, when pterosaurs still dominated the skies. They belong to a new species named Archaeornithura meemannae, a feathered wading bird that lived in what is now northeastern China. The CAS team, led by paleontologist Min Wang, published a detailed analysis of the new specimens today in Nature Communications.

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COFFEE STAIN UNDER A MICROSCOPE

Vin Kitayama, an artist and environmental researcher, created this image from something fairly mundane: an evaporating drop of espresso. Kitayama placed the drop on a microscope slide and then snapped pictures through a polarized light microscope at 4× magnification. As the coffee dried, solid compounds that were dissolved in the coffee, such as caffeine and chlorogenic acid, started forming small crystals. In the polarized light, these crystals shimmered different colors. The image won 9th place in the Nikon Small World photomicrography competition.

Credit: Vin Kitayama

More Chemistry in Pictures and C&EN content:

U.S. Senators Push for Ban on Caffeine Powder

Caffeinated Cocrystals

Tweaking Coffee’s Flavor Chemistry

KISS OF DEATH

One of the reasons cancer is so hard to defeat is that the body’s immune system has trouble recognizing cancer cells growing among healthy cells. Some scientists want to help. Researchers designed mouse T cells to specifically bind to a protein complex on fibrosarcoma MC57 tumor cell membranes. In this sped-up video, once the T cells (each about 10 μm across) meet their targets, they create holes in the cancer cell membranes using a protein called perforin. Next, the immune cells flood the pierced cells with a rush of cell-killing granules called granzymes. Propidium iodide, a dye the scientists added to the plate of cells, also squeezes in through the hole and starts glowing red when it comes in contact with RNA and DNA inside the cancer cells. This tells the researchers that the cells have been pierced and will soon die. This process takes about 75 minutes in real time.

Credit: Misty Jenkins (Read the paper.)

Related C&EN content:

The Immune System Fights Back

Cancer-Killing Machine

A scientific parody of Do you wanna build a snowman? from Disney’s Frozen. Lyrics by hyacynthus and myself. Vocals by me. A music video may be forthcoming.

“i should drink more water” i remind myself, halfway through my fifth coffee

Don't Believe Your Eyes - This Picture of Strawberries Isn't Red

Grey is the new red.

Two years ago, a goddamn blue (yes, blue) dress got the world into a tiz over colour perception, and in November last year, it was a pair of blue and black (or are they white and gold?) Havaianas that divided families and friendships worldwide.

Now a Japanese psychologist has created another mind-warping colour illusion by swapping the red pixels for grey ones in a photo of a strawberry tart, demonstrating once again that our brains have the final say on colour.

Akiyoshi Kitaoka from Ritsumeikan University in Japan stirred up a storm recently by tweeting a filtered photo of a strawberry tart and announcing there were no red pixels in the picture, contrary to what it might look like.

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Chemistry Valentine’s Cards by Nick Uhlig.