4 billion years of fixing inorganic carbon in the biosphere. Sometimes mistakes O2 for CO2. Not as fast as some enzymes, but very abundant. Here, have some phosphoglycerates about it.

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  • 24 Comments
Joined 6 months ago
Cake day: December 23rd, 2023
  • RuBisCO@slrpnk.nettoComic Strips@lemmy.world•i still think of you, jim henson
    23·
    3 days ago

    Dr. David Gelmont announced that Henson had died from Streptococcus pneumoniae, an infection that causes bacterial pneumonia. However, on May 29, Gelmont reclassified it as organ dysfunction resulting from streptococcal toxic shock syndrome caused by Streptococcus pyogenes. Gelmont noted Henson might have been saved had he gone to the hospital just a few hours sooner. Medical expert Lawrence D. Altman also stated that Henson’s death “may have shocked many Americans who believed that bacterial infections no longer could kill with such swiftness.” A lack of familiarity with this possibility, combined with the then-recent deaths of prominent men (including Rock Hudson, Liberace, Roy Cohn, and others) whose AIDS deaths had first been publicly euphemized as other illnesses due to AIDS’s pervasive stigma, led to a false but widespread rumor that Henson had died of AIDS–a rumor that was swiftly and directly refuted by Dr. Gelmont. Frank Oz believed the stress of negotiating with Disney led to Henson’s death, stating in a 2021 interview: “The Disney deal is probably what killed Jim. It made him sick.” Henson was cremated and in 1992, his ashes were scattered near Taos in New Mexico.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Henson

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streptococcus_pneumoniae

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streptococcus_pyogenes

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Walt_Disney_Company

  • RuBisCO@slrpnk.nettoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.world•How can I improve my handwriting?
    9·
    7 days ago

    Practice.

    Taking notes during lecture helped. Not only does it help cement the information in your mind, it is practice writing legibly enough it can be studied later. You could practice this now, before school starts, by watching something like Khan Academy.

    If your major sends you to the whiteboard often, that will help a lot, too. You will naturally improve as you do it out of necessity. Practice on the board until you can write a straight line of consistent text that doesn’t droop or curve down as it goes along.

    I second the suggestion for calligraphy in a script you like.

    Perhaps practice by trying to quickly write down song lyrics as you listen? I think that’s when I first started to improve.

    Pay attention to your classmates who can take good notes quickly. I made a friend who found my writing to be glacially slow, so I watched how they wrote to learn some tricks.

    Sorry if some of these won’t help until you’re in, but don’t worry about it too much. I’m sure your handwriting will be markedly improved by the end of even the first year.

    p.s.
    Write letters or postcards to friends.
    Try to fit your favorite quotes on a notecard.

  • RuBisCO@slrpnk.nettoSpace@lemmy.world•Giant structure in space challenges our understanding of the universe
    15·
    1 month ago

    “It goes somewhere, right?”
    “Of course.”
    “Can you tell me where?”
    “Sure. All this stuff winds up in Cygnus A.”
    “You’re making Cygnus A?”
    “Oh, it’s not just us. This is a…cooperative project of many galaxies. That’s what we mainly do–engineering. Only a…few of us are involved with emerging civilizations.”
    “There are cooperative projects between galaxies? Lots of galaxies, each with a kind of Central Administration? With hundreds of billions of stars in each galaxy. And then those administrations cooperate. To pour millions of suns into Centaurus…sorry, Cygnus A? The…forgive me, I’m just staggered by the scale. Why would you do all this? Whatever for?”
    “You mustn’t think of the universe as a wilderness. It hasn’t been that for billions of years. Think of it more as…cultivated.”

    Carl Sagan, Contact

  • RuBisCO@slrpnk.nettoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Best way to actually clean my glass shower door?
    2·
    4 months ago

    I could also be wrong, but I believe SDS has less ‘affinity’ for protons than acetic acid (which is part of the reason why detergents work so well). You’d need sulfuric acid, or something stronger, and removal from solution of its buddy ion sodium. Then I think you could protonate dodecyl sulfate.

    Now acetic acid and soaps…yeah, far more likely to generate scum. The polar head is a weaker acid.

    The importance of soap to human civilization is documented by history, but some problems associated with its use have been recognized. One of these is caused by the weak acidity (pKa ca. 4.9) of the fatty acids. Solutions of alkali metal soaps are slightly alkaline (pH 8 to 9) due to hydrolysis. If the pH of a soap solution is lowered by acidic contaminants, insoluble fatty acids precipitate and form a scum. A second problem is caused by the presence of calcium and magnesium salts in the water supply (hard water). These divalent cations cause aggregation of the micelles, which then deposit as a dirty scum.

    These problems have been alleviated by the development of synthetic amphiphiles called detergents (or syndets). By using a much stronger acid for the polar head group, water solutions of the amphiphile are less sensitive to pH changes. Also the sulfonate functions used for virtually all anionic detergents confer greater solubility on micelles incorporating the alkaline earth cations found in hard water.

    ChemLibreTexts