Welcome to the very first issue of Lab Letters, FF’s weekly science news micro-post!
While the Philippine justice system is busy placating the feelings of the offended Catholic clergy and trying to stifle free speech, here’s what the rest of the world’s scientists living in the 21st century have been up to:
Tang was just the beginning
The NASA Space Food Systems Laboratory’s Advanced Food Technology Project has posted a series of pictures detailing the various things astronauts eat while in space:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/27/3922806/nasa-space-food-photos
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/slsd/about/divisions/hefd/project/advanced-foods.html
Psychology gets in on the gigil phenomenon…
…scientifically dubbed “cute aggression,” with an experiment involving bubble wrap:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2013/01/26/psychology-why-you-want-to-squeeze-cute-things
165-million-year-old blood-biting tyrant swimmer identified
The partial skeleton, said to be related to crocodiles and similar to dolphins, has been sitting in a Glasgow museum since 1919:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-21220499
Wow! Almost as much as a floppy disk!
UK scientists convert Shakespeare’s sonnets and other data totalling 739 kilobytes into DNA strands:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/?p=42546
Scotty would be proud
UK and Czech scientists are working on a ‘tractor beam’ that can ferry small molecules across a small distance, hopefully scalable to bigger objects:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-21187598
Once you pop
Finally, here’s how popcorn happens:
What information would YOU want to be stored in DNA? Tell us in the comments!
See you next week for another awesome issue of FF’s Lab Letters!
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Image c/o D. Bogdanov/University of Edinburgh
