Comments | chicagojacks: mmmm.... slime mold....

chicagojacks

mmmm.... slime mold....

Mar 10, 2008 14:27

Here's a cake I made for a fellow grad student for passing his qualifying exam (The qual is your "official" entrance into the PhD program where you propose your research ideas for the next 3-4 years of your life to your committee of three profs. Good for organizing everything but a bit stressful and always calls for celebration afterwards!)

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Comments 6

anterrabae March 10 2008, 23:29:14 UTC

Hehe, that's awesome. My fiance and I are getting married at the Maryland Science Center and we plan to give out cookies that are decorated like a cell and we want to have our cake encircled by alpha helices (and god help that cake decorator if there are more or less than ten base pairs per turn!).

chicagojacks March 11 2008, 00:04:56 UTC

OMG thats awesome (and congrats)! Can you PLEASE post pics here after the special day?!? I'd love to see those cookies and alpha-helices. Make sure to give the decorators some nice ribbon-model pics so they can get it all perfect. :) Don't you hate diagrams/structures that are never perfect/ I actually saw a girl on livejournal who made a DNA quilt with exactly 3.5 turns per helix- I was blown away!

theoni March 11 2008, 03:41:03 UTC

Is that the one where if all the food in an area is gone they send out a signal and all meet up to form some weird structure so they can latch onto something else, I think a snail or something, I can quite remember. And they leave some behind to die cause it's all about survival of some of the dna and not the species as a whole?

~Kiyoshi

chicagojacks March 12 2008, 03:18:26 UTC

hahah- kinda... I think what happens is during times of stress they form these multicellular structures where the top (sorus) is basically a shit ton of spore cells (which i think can survive more harsh situations). That means all the other cells in the structure (the stalk for instance) can't propagate so they do sacrifice themselves for the survival of the species. these slime molds aren't studied as often these days but their behavior is so fascinating!

BTW- I think i might go to barefoot on thursday and bring along a friend. will you be gone?

theoni March 12 2008, 06:51:18 UTC

Ah, cool.

Im gonna try and make it there since it will be the last time I can go for a few weeks and Im jonesin for some coffee, company and music.

~Kiyoshi

theoni April 3 2008, 21:42:35 UTC

http://www.sogoodblog.com/2008/04/03/the-bacon-bra/#more-829

That reminded me of you for some reason

Semi NSFW

~Kiyoshi