Have an Ice Day!!!

Pseudomonas syringae is an extremely interesting bacterium, which I discovered reading Olivia Judson’s latest post on cloud-dwelling bacteria.

Usually, plants growing in cold regions use special chemicals as anti-freeze. This bacterium, though, secretes Ice Nucleation-active proteins to make ice crystals grow at temperatures as high as -2C. The crystals cause damage to cell walls of plants, and the bacterium vacuums up the nutrients released.

So, they use ice crystals as straw, although the name “syringae” doesn’t come from there. Rather, it comes from the plants they were isolated from at first:

It is named after the lilac tree (Syringa vulgaris), from which it was first isolated^[2]

(from the wikipedia)

and always on the theme of vampires from the cold, the new Penny Arcade strip is out!

Loosing my Italian

It’s finally happening. Mentre il mio amico Paolo festeggia l’avvento del suo inglese nativo, cioe’ del momento in cui parla direttamente in questa lingua invece che dover tradurre back and forth dall’italiano, io mi rendo conto del contrario. Quando leggo in Italiano, mi suona strano, e cerco continuamente di ritradurlo in inglese, come a correggere gli errori di un incompetente (ma inesistente) doppiatore.

Arrgh!!!

Way to go!!!

It’s been a while since I’ve been to Retrospectacle.

And now I see this: Shelley reports of a psychotic patient who killed himself by slowly pushing a ballpen through his eye in his brain… Ugh!!!

Apparently, the guy stayed conscious all the way for four days before dying, but didn’t tell the doctors trying to save him what he did!!!