mimico-tiffany:

In order to be able to visualise DNA, one genotyping technique employs Phosphorus-32. This technique is called the Southern Blot. Phosphorus-32 is radioactive. Working with P-32 is a bit awkward, as one not only has to work in a fume hood designed for working with biohazardous material, but…

They say the red comet is a herald of a new age. A messenger from the gods.

This is my life

This is me too!

The Physics Is Theoretical But The Fun Is Real

So good!

maheshieux:

If you are on orbit not far from the Earth, but want to transfer to a higher orbit- how should you do it? You can’t just blast upwards- that will put you in a strange elliptical orbit, not the desired circular orbit. The best idea is to use an elliptical transfer orbit which touches the smaller and larger circular orbits each at one point. You can use just two boosts to go in and out of the transfer orbit. This is a pretty good example of how moving about in space isn’t as simple as just pointing the rocket nose in the right direction (unless you want to waste fuel).

Oh my goodness we learnt this in physics this semester! PS the maths involved is less fun than this drawing is to watch.

So true. And there is so much that still doesn’t make sense, why would you bother with things people have already worked out?!

Quantum Levitation

This video demonstration is in something called Quantum Levitation, a phenomenon that results from the fact that superconductors and magnets tend to not like each other.

When possible, the superconductor will expel all the magnetic field from inside. This is the Meissner effect. In our case, since the superconductor is extremely thin, the magnetic field DOES penetrate. However, it does that in discrete quantities called flux tubes.

Inside each magnetic flux tube superconductivity is locally destroyed. The superconductor will try to keep the magnetic tubes pinned in weak areas (e.g. grain boundaries). Any spatial movement of the superconductor will cause the flux tubes to move. In order to prevent that the superconductor remains “trapped” in midair.

Frictionless motion is AWESOME!

Here is how to solve the problem caused by a bug in parted that wrecks the MBR on Macbooks when you try to install linux after partitioning with parted:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=11215214&postcount=185

I wanted to install the Freely Transformable Windows compiz plugin in Ubuntu 11.04. These are the steps I followed:

1. Install needed dependencies:
   sudo apt-get install build-essential compiz-dev libboost-serialization-dev cmake
2. Download the source code - under “summary | shortlog | log | commit | commitdiff | tree” click on “snapshot” to download a compressed snapshot of the latest code.
3. Extract the code and make a new directory inside it called “build”. Open a terminal and navigate to this build directory.
4. Run “cmake ..”, then “make”, then “make install”. If everything works, you will now have the Freely Transformable Windows plugin show up in Compiz Config Settings Manager.

Install Wine 1.2, and run the installer (may have to run from terminal). Install wingdings.ttf (i.e. put in .fonts directory)to get same bullets. For Powerpoint to run, open winecfg and set the library override: riched20 (native,windows). Done!