“When I was a kid growing up I was obsessed with animals and monsters… I’d draw them everyday, and when I grew up I either wanted to be a zoologist or a
monster hunter… When I got a bit older I realized that being a zoologist was less exciting than I had imagined, and that
‘monster hunter’ isn’t even a real job, so I just kept drawing. I pretty much do
the exact same thing at 29 years old that I did when I was 9 years old.”
Nicholas Di Genova weaves organisms together in pen and ink.
[more inside]
posted by emilyd22222
on Dec 8, 2010 -
11 comments
In 2006 scientists sent a container of salmonella to space and kept an identical container on Earth under similar temperature conditions. Bacteria from both strains were fed to mice, and the "space germs", having undergone 167 gene changes, were
3 times more likely to make the mice sick.
posted by reformedjerk
on Sep 25, 2007 -
48 comments
Mutatoes is a photographic collection by artist
Uli Westphal of non-standard fruits and vegetables found at Berlin groceries and farmers' markets. The distorted, the discolored, the bumpy, the stumpy, the coiled and the conjoined all get star treatment. (Flash site)
posted by hydrophonic
on Jul 27, 2007 -
21 comments
The BBC
reports that twenty years on "the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power station is teeming with life." Lynx, eagle owl, wild boars, horses, wolves—even signs of bears which haven't been seen here in centuries.
British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock (recently
discussed here)
speculates whether "small volumes of nuclear waste from power production should be stored in tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by greedy developers."
Lovelock
describes Chernobyl as "a nasty accident that took 45 lives." This article in the New Scientist
claims that that the death toll may ultimately reach 60,000.
posted by 327.ca
on Apr 21, 2006 -
49 comments
Overnight mutation or lousy science? Or maybe an early April Fool's joke. The Gameboy generation's thumbs are as developed and agile as the rest of their digits. "...the younger generation has taken to using thumbs in a completely different way and are instinctively using it where the rest of us use our index fingers is particularly interesting.' " An interesting social phenomenon, certainly, but biology...?
posted by gordian knot
on Mar 27, 2002 -
17 comments
