Image Of The Week - December 26, 2016

In early 1971, Kay Brown, Dindga McCannon, and Faith Ringgold gathered a group of black women at McCannon’s Brooklyn home to discuss their common frustrations in trying to build their careers as artists. Excluded from the largely white downtown art world, as well as from the male-dominated black art world, the women found juggling their creative ambitions with their roles as mothers and working heads of households left little time to make and promote their art.

Out of this initial gathering came one of the first exhibitions of professional black women artists. “Where We At”—Black Women Artists, 1971, opened at Acts of Art Gallery in the West Village that June. Adopting the show’s title as their name, the collective began meeting at members’ homes and studios, building support systems for making their work, while assisting each other with personal matters such as childcare.

Influenced by the Black Arts Movement, members worked largely in figurative styles, emphasizing black subjects. While the group engaged politically with racism, their work also spoke to personal experiences of sexism, and members contributed to publications including the Feminist Art Journal and Heresies. Though the group’s mission was not explicitly feminist, Where We At recognized the power of collectivity—empowering black women by creating a network to help attain their professional goals as artists.

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Living and Working Aboard Station

 Join us on Facebook Live for a conversation with astronaut Kate Rubins and the director of the National Institutes for Health on Tuesday, October 18 at 11:15 a.m. ET.

Astronaut Kate Rubins has conducted out of this world research aboard Earth’s only orbiting laboratory. During her time aboard the International Space Station, she became the first person to sequence DNA in space. On Tuesday, she’ll be live on Facebook with National Institute of Health director Francis Collins, who led the effort to map the human genome. You can submit questions for Kate using the hashtag #SpaceChat on Twitter, or during the live event. Here’s a primer on the science this PhD astronaut has been conducting to help inspire your questions: 

Kate has a background in genomics (a branch of molecular genetics that deals with the study of genomes,specifically the identification and sequencing of their constituent genes and the application of this knowledge in medicine, pharmacy,agriculture, and other fields). When she began her tenure on the station, zero base pairs of DNA had been sequenced in space. Within just a few weeks, she and the Biomolecule Sequencer team had sequenced their one billionth base of DNA aboard the orbital platform.

“I [have a] genomics background, [so] I get really excited about that kind of stuff,” Rubins said in a downlink shortly after reaching the one billion base pairs sequenced goal.

Learn more about this achievement:

+First DNA Sequencing in Space a Game Changer

+Science in Short: One Billion Base Pairs Sequenced

Why is DNA Sequencing in Space a Big Deal?

A space-based DNA sequencer could identify microbes, diagnose diseases and understand crew member health, and potentially help detect DNA-based life elsewhere in the solar system.

+Why Sequencing DNA in Space is a Big Deal

https://youtu.be/1N0qm8HcFRI 

Miss the Reddit AMA on the subject? Here’s a transcript:

+NASA AMA: We just sequenced DNA in space for the first time. Ask us anything! 

NASA and Its Partnerships

We’re not doing this alone. Just like the DNA sequencing was a collaborative project with industry, so is the Eli Lilly Hard to Wet Surfaces investigation, which is a partnership between CASIS and Eli Lilly Co. In this experiment aboard the station, astronauts will study how certain materials used in the pharmaceutical industry dissolve in water while in microgravity. Results from this investigation could help improve the design of tablets that dissolve in the body to deliver drugs, thereby improving drug design for medicines used in space and on Earth. Learn more about what we and our partners are doing:

+Eli Lilly Hard to Wet Surfaces – been happening the last week and a half or so

Researchers to Test How Solids Dissolve in Space to Design Better Tablets and Pills on Earth

With our colleagues at the Stanford University School of Medicine, we’re also investigating the effects of spaceflight on stem cell-derived heart cells, specifically how heart muscle tissue, contracts, grows and changes  in microgravity and how those changes vary between subjects. Understanding how heart muscle cells change in space improves efforts for studying disease, screening drugs and conducting cell replacement therapy for future space missions. Learn more:

+Heart Cells

+Weekly Recap From the Expedition Lead Scientist for Aug. 18, 2016 

It’s Not Just Medicine

Kate and her crew mates have also worked on the combustion experiments.

Kate has also worked on the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM), an experimental expandable capsule that docks with the station. As we work on our Journey to Mars, future space habitats  are a necessity. BEAM, designed for Mars or other destinations, is a lightweight and relatively simple to construct solution. Kate has recently examined BEAM, currently attached to the station, to take measurements and install sensors.

Kate recently performed a harvest of the Plant RNA Regulation experiment, by removing seed cassettes and stowing them in cold stowage.

The Plant RNA Regulation investigation studies the first steps of gene expression involved in development of roots and shoots. Scientists expect to find new molecules that play a role in how plants adapt and respond to the microgravity environment of space, which provides new insight into growing plants for food and oxygen supplies on long-duration missions. Read more about the experiment:

+Plant RNA Harvest

NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins is participating in several investigations examining changes in her body as a result of living in space. Some of these changes are similar to issues experienced by our elderly on Earth; for example, bone loss (osteoporosis), cardiovascular deconditioning, immune dysfunction, and muscle atrophy. Understanding these changes and how to prevent them in astronauts off the Earth may help improve health for all of us on the Earth. In additional, the crew aboard station is also working on more generalized studies of aging.

+ Study of the effects of aging on C. elegans, a model organism for a range of biological studies.

Brexit 'will enhance' UK wildlife laws - Gove - BBC News

Any Brexit changes to the UK's wildlife laws will increase - not reduce - environmental protection, Michael Gove has pledged.

The only good thing I can see coming out of Brexit (if they actually deliver beyond a speech)

Fungal tissues – the fungal mantle around the root tip and the fungal network of tendrils that penetrates the root of plants, or Hartig Net, between Pinus sylvestris plant root cells – in green. Ectomycorrhizal (ECM) fungi help trees tolerate drought and boost the productivity of bioenergy feedstock trees, including poplar and willow.

Via Berkeley Lab: The sclerotia are in the soil!

More: How Fungi Help Trees Tolerate Drought (Joint Genome Institute)

Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?

I struggle to understand why other white people refuse to realise they're racist. You can be at every rally, supporting every cause, it doesn't matter. We were raised to be inherently racist, and the sooner you face up to that the sooner you can actually work on solving the problems. Prejudice is automatic in most of our upbringings, and if you're living your life saying 'oh but I'm not racist', you're never actually gonna get rid of those prejudices.

u know what … i changed my mind… all u scientists out there who worked ur butts off just to have your research purposefully ignored by the government… do your science thing and bring back the dinosaurs… catch them ignoring you when a velociraptor is our next president…. like ding dong what’s that? it’s science, it doesn’t care about your silly ignorant opinion… it’s back with a vengeance… and it’s hungry, bitch

Fusion to Air Special ‘The Naked Truth’ Report on Standing Rock Movement

Special Includes Interview with Actor and Activist Mark Ruffalo

‘The Naked Truth: Standing Rock’ Reported by FUSION’s Nelufar Hedayat Airs Tonight, December 22 @ 10PM

In a new special report ‘The Naked Truth: Standing Rock,’ FUSION takes an in-depth look at the Native American activists who have have been boldly standing up to a large energy company and the government to prevent the construction of an oil pipeline under the Missouri River. After months of protests, as the world watched, the self-described ‘water protectors’ accomplished a momentary victory when the Obama administration announced it will not allow the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to move forward. Actor and activist Mark Ruffalo, one of the strongest supporters of the #NoDAPL movement, sits down with FUSION’s Nelufar Hedayat to discuss the challenge of transforming a momentary gain into a long-standing victory, considering the potential threats from the incoming Trump administration. “The Naked Truth: Standing Rock” will air Thursday, December 22 @ 10PM on FUSION (channel listings).  

“Corporate and state power has come so close together that people are at a moment where they don’t feel like their voices are being heard. And so the last thing that’s left for us is to assemble, is to gather together and to protest – or protect,” Ruffalo said to Hedayat.

“People think that Bismarck moved the pipeline because they wanted to protect the white people. In fact what I would tell you is that that’s bullshit,” the Mayor of Bismarck Mike Seminary told FUSION. “The city of Bismarck never was involved in the process… ever. We didn’t have a role in it.”

“It’s my home. It’s my water. My home is right there - my house on the hill. My son is buried there. My father is buried there. Who would put a pipeline next to your son’s grave?,” Ladonna Brave Bull Allard told FUSION.

“This is a reminder of what we can do when we look out for one another. Like Joe Biden and so many other Americans, I’ve lost people I love deeply to cancer. I’ve heard often from those whose loved ones are suffering from Alzheimer’s, addiction, and other debilitating diseases. Their heartbreak is real, and so we have a responsibility to respond with real solutions. This bill will make a big difference, and I look forward to signing it as soon as it reaches my desk.” —President Obama on the passage of the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act, which includes $1.8 billion dollars for Vice President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative to end cancer as we know it

Even the sexiest person you have ever met in your life is just a collection of organic compounds rambling around in a sack of water

Hank Green (via renegade-is-in-my-blood)