Grow, my Garden.

jamiejedi:

“Ben, old chap! I haven’t seen you in a dog’s age!”
“Brian, good to see you, buddy! How are the wife and kids?”

(Source: northwestaspirations)

green-home:

Green Home

(Source: the-dope-feels-good, via theartfulgarden)

we-are-star-stuff:

Astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it would taste vaguely of raspberries.

The unanticipated discovery follows years of work by astronomers who trained their 30m radio telescope on the enormous ball of dust and gas in the hope of spotting complex molecules that are vital for life.

Finding amino acids in interstellar space is a Holy Grail for astrobiologists, as this would raise the possibility of life emerging on other planets after being seeded with the molecules.

In the latest survey, astronomers sifted through thousands of signals from Sagittarius B2, a vast dust cloud at the centre of our galaxy. While they failed to find evidence for amino acids, they did find a substance called ethyl formate, the chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries.

“It does happen to give raspberries their flavour, but there are many other molecules that are needed to make space raspberries,” Arnaud Belloche, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, told the Guardian.

Curiously, ethyl formate has another distinguishing characteristic: it also smells of rum.

The astronomers used the IRAM telescope in Spain to analyse electromagnetic radiation emitted by a hot and dense region of Sagittarius B2 that surrounds a newborn star.

Radiation from the star is absorbed by molecules floating around in the gas cloud, which is then re-emitted at different energies depending on the type of molecule.

While scouring their data, the team also found evidence for the lethal chemical propyl cyanide in the same cloud. The two molecules are the largest yet discovered in deep space.

Dr Belloche and his colleague Robin Garrod at Cornell University in New York have collected nearly 4,000 distinct signals from the cloud but have only analysed around half of these.

“So far we have identified around 50 molecules in our survey, and two of those had not been seen before,” said Belloche.

Last year, the team came tantalisingly close to finding amino acids in space with the discovery of a molecule that can be used to make them, called amino acetonitrile.

The latest discoveries have boosted the researchers’ morale because the molecules are as large as the simplest amino acid, glycine. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and are widely seen as being critical for complex life to exist anywhere in the universe.

“The difficulty in searching for complex molecules is that the best astronomical sources contain so many different molecules that their ‘fingerprints’ overlap and are difficult to disentangle,” Belloche said.

The molecules are thought to form when chemicals that already exist on some dust grains, such as ethanol, link together to make more complex chains.

“There is no apparent limit to the size of molecules that can be formed by this process, so there’s good reason to expect even more complex organic molecules to be there,” said Garrod.

(via blamoscience)

laboratoryequipment:

Invasive Plants Are Biological Pollution

A council created by the state Legislature has begun an effort to help agencies and the public better understand the need to prevent invasive plant species from getting established and spreading in Indiana. Invasive plants are a major threat to Indiana and the nation and, when left uncontrolled, spread quickly, says John Jachetta, chairman of the Indiana Invasive Species Council, which has secretarial offices at Purdue Univ.

“They are a form of biological pollution that disrupts the function of our natural ecosystems,” he says. “What were once unique regional characteristics resulting from thousands of years of natural selection start to blur, and decades of conservation achievements are lost.”

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/invasive-plants-are-biological-pollution

thefabulousthomasj:

feminishblog:

yourpervert:

In 1808, Napoleon, running out of scenic holiday destinations to invade, somehow totally forgot about his neighbor to the south, Spain. So that year he dispatched his troops, kicking off the Peninsular War.

Only 20 years old and working as a barmaid in the town of Valdepenas, Juana Galan was not expecting a surge of French soldiers to come storming through her village. But on June 6, that’s exactly what happened. At that time, most of the men were fighting Napoleon’s forces elsewhere in the nation. Juana, unfazed by things like rifles and Frenchmen and French riflemen, began organizing the women in her village to form a trap for the approaching army.

When the army arrived, Juana and her friends were ready. They dumped boiling water and oil on the French troops, which by all accounts will instantly take the fight out of pretty much anyone. Then Juana, armed with only a batan, beat back the heavily armed French cavalry with her squad of village women, almost none of whom were armed with guns.

The French retreated, giving up on capturing not just Juana’s town but the entire province of La Mancha, leading to ultimate Spanish victory. Today, she is seen in Spain as a national hero, a symbol of resistance, strength, patriotism, feminism and hitting shit with a stick.

(x)

That’s one hell of a portrait.

Probably my favorite thing ever. Truly Inspired.

I never fuck with women, in more ways than one.

(Source: lady-eboshi, via dendroica)

japaneseaesthetics:

Cat and Wasp. By Muramasa Kudo, Japan. 24K Gold Leaf & acrylic on canvas.

(via flowerfood)

(Source: alexxxachung, via iheartpaulbanks)