Crystals And Catalysts

This is also coincides with my 100th post!  Yay! Today is finally day 30 of the 30 Day Science Blog Challenge. You can read the rest of the months posts here . Just under two months ago I came up with the idea to prepare a 30 day blogging challenge for science bloggers. planning it wasn't easy, but I tried to make all the topics universal to science bloggers, so that anyone can join in at any time. The goal was to post consecutively for  30 days, responding to the topics given here .  So now that this is my 30th and final blog post in the challenge, how did I do and how did I find this challenge? What made this blog so challenging? Apart from a little technical glitch in May ( read about it here ) , which caused me to delay the challenge till June, the 30 day challenge was easy at times and difficult at other times. I think the hardest posts to prepare were the "controversial topics in science" posts since I had to decide on a topic that was controvers...

I can't believe that the 30 days I had planned are almost coming to an end. I had been planing this project since May and I couldn't wait to start it. Its now already 29th June and we're 29 days into the challenge. Time flies when your having fun. :) Now that the 30 day challenge is over I now have to plan for the future months on this blog. Since the 30 Day challenge recieved a great response I think I will make it a yearly thing. It will be really interesting to see how my responses change to the topics next year.  But in regards to next month I will be... ...Returning to #SOTW Scientist of the Week... SOTW  is posted every Friday, where I give a condensed profile of a scientist that may be famous or not.  You can check out the previous ones here . Let me know, in the comments section below, if you want me to construct a profile of a scientist that may not be well known and you'd like to find out more about them. ...Posting frequently during the week... ...

This weeks science news: understanding speech and sleep, fatty diets that harm the brain, fake pills, restricting antibiotics and asthma caused by pollution. Click to enlarge image!

For the second day, discussing a controversial topic in science I will be reviewing the efficiency of Alternative medicine . But to what extent can we trust alternative medicine? First of all, what is alternative medicine ? Alternative method contains the practice of: acupuncture, chiropractic and homeopathy. All of these techniques had not been proven by scientific methods.   The reason why it’s so popular is due to the power of anecdotal evidence. For example, you can hear from a friend that alternative treatment helped improve their back pain. At first, this may seem as the treatment works and you’ll want to try it. But you have to remember that the experience of a single person doesn’t prove that a treatment works the same for everyone. Sometimes the body gets better on its own or via a placebo effect, giving rise to the “it worked for me” response and encouraging more people to follow in their footsteps.   ................. Contrary to what th...

Is it possible, that after years of controversy, between the public, that GMO’s are safe? There are many people for or against GMOs, but mainly against. Even though the public are showered with incorrect, and sometimes dishonest, information about GMOs a.k.a genetically modified organisms, s cientists and science writers are working to correct any misconceptions about GMOs to the public and eliminate misleading data. What are GMOs? GMO’s are plants or animals that have gone under genetic modification: where scientists alter their genes with DNA from different species of living organisms, bacteria or viruses to get desired traits such as resistance to disease or tolerance of pesticides. Such as: apples that have been genetically modified to be resistant to browning. Studies about GMOs... The results from a meta analysis (conducted by Wilhelm Klümper, Matin Qaim , Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Georg-August-University of Goettingen, ...

Some #sciart in light of the #NYCBlizzard RT @TomKierein : Another frozen bubble pic by Candice Trimble pic.twitter.com/PTvlOgxblf — SciArt (@Sci_Art) January 27, 2015 #SciArt leaf prints with linocut organic molecules responsible for their colours http://t.co/H57dew88bN #printmaking pic.twitter.com/MjdJqDI6if — Ele Willoughby (@minouette) March 7, 2015 Trending now on #Biocanvas - titanium carbonide crystals http://t.co/L6eGLD9GqT #chemistry #sciart #microscope pic.twitter.com/LezUa1s2p6 — Biocanvas (@biocanvas) December 7, 2014 Amazing Photographs Of Drugs Under The Microscope http://t.co/Z6GzxQNRlr #microscopy #sciart — GE Life Sciences (@GECellBiology) July 15, 2014 Crystals vibrating to hue of Love. -CB " #art @CRoullardArt #MicroCrystal my piece "Crystal Rock Garden" #SciArt pic.twitter.com/7nijCfNm9i " — Carl Barbarotto (@Carlolight) April 22, 2015 The infectious beauty of salt transforming metal. S...

If you love both science and art, Twitter was a wonderful place to be last March. #SciArt week, which officially ran from March 1st through the 7th, was initiated by  Symbiartic bloggers Glendon Mellow, Kalliopi Monoyios and Katie McKissick, who  encouraged  science artists of all types of backgrounds to come together and tweet their work to the world.  The product was a storm of  scientific illustrations, paintings, sculptures and animations, that  the Internet had never seen before.  Their original goal was to get a total of 1600 #SciArt tweets a day but within the first 24 hours they managed to reach 4000 tweets of scientific illustrations and paintings and other artworks. SciArt is a great way of representing science using art and photography. It also shows how beautiful science can be and encourage the love of science through art. Although  #SciArt is overloaded with biology related artworks it needs more chemistry artworks. This cou...

The Laboratory vs The Office. The comparison. Woking in the office a.k.a Science Communication / Publishing: There comes a point in which every scientist has had enough of the lab and they no longer want to work in the laboratory, no matter what field they're in. So they go out and look into other careers that they can go into that doesn't involve lab work (see this post by Nature ). Some scientists turn to science writing. Science communication is a great way to stick to your field and communicate science to the people with / without science background/education. A comment / quote in a post in Nature: Soapbox Science , perfectly describes why we need science communication: “It deals with an issue that is important not only, or even mainly, for the scientific community but also for the nation as a whole and for each individual within it. More than ever, people need some understanding of science, whether they are involved in decision-making at a nation...

If you've read Day 22 of my science blogging challenge you'll know that I love cooking and I love chemistry (obviously). I've recently discovered the BEST mix of chemistry and cooking: Molecular Gastronomy! (I know I might be a little bit late to the party but it's still awesome!) Molecular gastronomy is a subcategory of food science that aims to find out the different ways of food's chemical and physical transformations. It uses different chemistry laboratory techniques, such as using liquid nitrogen (to freeze things really quickly), to make different takes on foods; and the best thing is, is that its still edible! Click on the link to watch a detailed video about it on VSauce's Channel. This video of powdered ice cream in a candy strawberry shows all the complex yet intriguing physical and chemical transformations that the ice cream and strawberries go though to get to the end product.

I have found that, no matter what the context, I will click on nearly any article with a type of experience in the title. I enjoy reading peoples different views in what they work in, if its working on their PhD or working in a company or their undergrad studies.  Maybe you’re an ordinary person, not a scientist, and you've just clicked here for some light lunchtime reading. But if you’re a scientist, perhaps you can relate  to my experiences in the laboratory.  If you personally know me you'll know that another hobby I have is cooking. I feel like the kitchen is like a laboratory except you make edible items. I think this is the basis for loving the laboratory, even if things go wrong its still a great place to work in. So here's a list of prominent things from my experience from working in a laboratory... 1. You don't know where time goes or what time it is... You can easily forget that time goes by in the...