Straight Outta Answers

Beautiful Winged Insects Made of Discarded Circuit Boards by Julie Alice Chappell

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...

This Week in Chemistry: Treating cataracts, LED preservatives, nitrogen glaciers, and more! http://goo.gl/56bcZu

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

nem sirok csak 65ezren belementek a szemembe

A crowd of 65,000 sings ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ perfectly while waiting for a Green Day concert

This week is Antibiotic Awareness Week – learn more about the different types of antibiotics with this graphic!

Flower Mushroom Coral - Ricordea yuma

Ricordea yuma (Corallimorpharia - Ricordeidae) is a species of soft coral belonging to a group commonly referred to as mushroom corals. These soft corals are very popular among aquarists due to their vibrant and varied color patterns. 

Ricordea yuma is found in the tropical Pacific. Like other Corallimopharians, this one has the ability to rapidly colonize available substrate.

References: [1] - [2] - [3]

Photo credits: [Top: ©Felix Salazar | Locality: nano reef tank, 2008] - [Bottom: ©Scott Cohen | Locality: reef tank, 2009]

High Current/Amps through metal

Any metal that can conduct low voltage / high amperage electricity acts as a resistor between two electrode wires (as in the case above), which are made out of copper, which has a better conductivity than iron/steel which heats up due to the extreme electrical resistance. 

Copper (Cu):

Resistivity: ρ(Ω·m) at 20ºC = 1.68×10−8

Conductivity: σ (S/m) at 20ºC = 5.96×107 

Temp. Coefficient:  0.003862 (K−1)

Iron (Fe): (although what you see in the gif is steel, iron comes pretty close)

Resistivity: ρ(Ω m) at 20ºC = 1.00×10−7

Conductivity: σ (S/m) at 20ºC = 1.00×107

Temp. Coefficient: 0.005 (K−1)

Giffed by: rudescience  From: This video

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

New grasses neutralize toxic pollution from bombs, explosives, and munitions

It is the first reported demonstration of genetically transforming grasses to supercharge their ability to remove contamination from the environment. Grasses are hearty, fast-growing, low-maintenance plants that offer practical advantages over other species in real-world cleanup situations.

On military live fire training ranges, troops practice firing artillery shells, drop bombs on old tanks or derelict buildings and test the capacity of new weapons.

But those explosives and munitions leave behind toxic compounds that have contaminated millions of acres of U.S. military bases – with an estimated cleanup bill ranging between $16 billion and $165 billion.

In a paper published online Nov. 16 in Plant Biotechnology Journal, University of Washington and University of York researchers describe new transgenic grass species that can neutralize and eradicate RDX – a toxic compound that has been widely used in explosives since World War II.

UW engineers introduced two genes from bacteria that learned to eat RDX and break it down into harmless components in two perennial grass species: switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) and creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera). The best-performing strains removed all the RDX from a simulated soil in which they were grown within less than two weeks, and they retained none of the toxic chemical in their leaves or stems.

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