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Search Results for: label/test tube meat

  • Shmeat and Potatoes: The dinner of the future?

    …scaffold made of natural and edible material.  As sheets of cells grow on these scaffolds, they are laid on top of each other to bulk up the shmeat (hence “sheets of meat”).  But, in order for the cells on the inside of this 3D mass to grow as well as the cells on the outside, there has to be an sufficient way to deliver nutrients and oxygen to all cells.  Back to the tenderloin – when it is still in the cow, the cells that make up this piece…

    Authored by on July 20, 2012

  • Pregnancy 101: The science behind the wand of destiny

    …om laughing so hard, let us get back to the science. The first “slice of bread” is called the reaction zone, the “sandwich filling” is called the test zone, and the “last slice of bread” is called the control zone (see figure 2). Each of these zones is coated with capture antibodies, but differ from each other in how they work.  The antibodies on the reaction zone will capture only hCG and will detach from the strip upon exposure to urine. The…

    Authored by on November 26, 2011

  • Hey, doc, as long as you’re down there…

    …loma virus, the pathogen that causes cervical cancer. Since Papanicolaou published his study, cervical cancer rates among screened populations have plummeted, while ovarian and endometrial cancer rates remain unchanged. Some 23,000 American women die annually from those two diseases, and ovarian tumors are especially lethal, as these are often only caught at advanced stages. Clearly, an early detection method is needed, and a new study in Scien…

    Authored by on January 22, 2013

  • The Finkbeiner Test

    …mphasize a woman’s sex, you inevitably end up dismissing her science. I asked her if there was a particular story that epitomized the problem, and she pointed me to this two page profile of Vera Rubin, published in Science in 2002. (Full text is behind a paywall, sorry.) Twelve of the story’s 24 paragraphs mention Rubin’s sex or gender roles. “  Four paragraphs on her science, and she was the one who found dark matter,” Finkbeiner says. It’s time…

    Authored by on March 5, 2013

  • Depressing genes

    ter all, that’s one of the reasons why scientists are trying to identify risk genes: to design better treatments for those disorders. [Image credit: DNA, public domain image from US govt. Image of Prozac, credit Tom Varco, CC 3.0 license.] [Siobhan Mitchell obtained a Neurobiology Ph.D. at the State University New York at Albany (SUNY Albany), followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at University of Washington, Seattle. She currently works at the…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …ll selection of different materials: bricks, mortar, iron, glass, and wood. Arranged in different ways, these few materials can yield a huge variety of structures. We encountered functional groups and the SPHONC in Chapter 3. These components form the four categories of molecules of life. These Big Four biological molecules are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. They can have many roles, from giving an organism structure to be…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • XX Tech Report: Rapid detection and treatment for deadly blood infections

    …[Ed. note: Introducing our new technology editor, Jeffrey Perkel!  Jeffrey, a recovering scientist, has always had a passion for the technology and the gadgetry of science. He has been a scientific writer and editor since 2000, when he left academia to join the staff of The Scientist magazine as a Senior Editor for Technology. Before that, he studied transcription factor biology at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Medical School –…

    Authored by on August 24, 2012

  • What is a beating embryonic heart?

    …d to fuse at about day 21 or 22 in embryonic development, forming a single tube. This fusion triggers the rhythmic beating of the heart as the cells start to communicate. In human development, the embryo at this point is 2 to 3 mm in length, about the height of a letter on this screen. The tube looks like this: Imagine a little tiny group of cells beating there in the tube. Their meeting triggers signaling among themselves through special ju…

    Authored by on April 3, 2013

  • Image Caption Test Post

    …nserted before the material dried, the mold is removed. Though this paper included only two participants, a few years later the same researchers (plus a couple of others) published another study that examined vaginal molds of 39 women. In these women, all Caucasian, vaginal lengths ranged from almost 7 to almost 15 centimeters (2.75–6 in) with diameters between 2.4 and 6.5 cm (~1–2.5 in). A later studyclassified the diversity of vaginal shapes: c…

    Authored by on April 5, 2010

  • An obituary fail of the Finkbeiner test

    …ystem that keeps satellites in orbit where they belong. You know, really important stuff. For example, in addition to her great achievement, she received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama in 2011 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2010. Coolest of all? She even worked for a couple of years at NASA in the 1980s on the rocket motor for the space shuttle. She was, quite literally, a freaki…

    Authored by on April 1, 2013

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