May 31, 2007
What Goes Great With Thursday?
Vanishingly little!
Thankfully, you do have the hard-working staff here at Possumblog to provide you with the finest possible entertainment for the price. With the summer hiatus of the Thursday Three continuing, we use this time as a way to experiment with new content and features to make your reading experience ever more enjoyable. To that end, today we have an exciting segment we like to call...
RANDOM USDA LABORATORY RESEARCH PHOTOS!
Here's Technician Brandy Jones, examining a rose plant that began as cells grown in a tissue culture! Photo by Scott Bauer!
In another Scott Bauer image, using a differential scanning calorimeter, plant physiologist Christina Walters can detect phase-state changes of water and lipids in seeds! First she cools thin slices of seed tissues sealed in tiny aluminum pans (held in tweezers) to -170°C! The relationship she finds between a seed's water content, temperature at which its heat capacity changes, and size of the change give clues about the nature of glasses that form!
Now, you might not realize this, BUT--deciphering the genetic code of livestock could help researchers reduce the total numbers of live animals needed for studies! At the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska, technician Kristen Katzberg reads DNA sequences! Photo by Keith Weller!
In this Vermeeresque image by Jack Dykinga, Technician Brooke Balsam prepares ground beef for fat analysis!
We hope you've enjoyed this exciting, fascinating look at the United States Department of Agriculture, and we thank them for allowing us to use their photos.
I sure hope Chet got those forms filled out and returned...
Woohoo!!! Hot science chick pictures!!
Posted by: skinnydan at May 31, 2007 08:52 AMHey, maybe they can regrow John Edwards' soul!
Posted by: skillzy at May 31, 2007 09:22 AMSkillzy, they're scientists, not miracle workers.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 31, 2007 09:29 AMIt also assumes the poor lad had one to begin with. In any event, I believe there's a prior claim.
Posted by: skinnydan at May 31, 2007 09:57 AM
"Technician Brandy Jones looks at the single rose her boyfriend gave her for Valentine's Day and wonders, 'Why am I still with this doofus? It's encased in plastic! Is he trying to say something? I can't put this next to my testing station. The other technicians will see how cheap my boyfriend is and feel sorry for me. Stupid boyfriend.'"
Posted by: mike hollihan at May 31, 2007 12:07 PM