PJH Studios

Category: Science

Do anything related to science biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc

  • Growing Sequoias in Detroit

    An effort started in 2020, seeks to grow an urban forest of sequoias in Detroit.

    Giant sequoias are not native to Michigan. And, yet, they’re somehow thriving in the state, which has a much cooler and wetter climate than their native California.

    The biggest giant sequoia east of the Rockies is a 77-year-old specimen, called the Michigan Champion, that was planted in 1948 on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan. The tree measures roughly 116 feet tall and 5 feet in diameter.

    “They’re safer here … we don’t have wildfires like [California],” Kemp tells the Associated Press. “The soil stays pretty moist, even in the summer. They like to have that winter irrigation, so when the snow melts they can get a good drink.”

  • Drone summons lightning

    It’s like something out of a sci fi movie–a drone summoning lightning.

    Earlier this month, the Japanese telecommunications company Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) successfully used a drone equipped with a lightning-proof cage to essentially summon lightning in an effort to mitigate damage from an incoming thunderstorm. According to NTT, lightning causes up to 200 billion yen ($1.4 billion) damage a year, so using these lightning drones could go a long way towards protecting sensitive equipment and population centers during severe weather events.

  • A universal antivenom

    It sounds like a joke based on a basic misunderstanding of science, but a man who’s been slowly injecting himself with snake venom may now provide a source for a universal antivenom.

    Over nearly 18 years, the man, Tim Friede, 57, injected himself with more than 650 carefully calibrated, escalating doses of venom to build his immunity to 16 deadly snake species. He also allowed the snakes — mostly one at a time, but sometimes two, as in the video — to sink their sharp fangs into him about 200 times.

    This bit of daredevilry (one name for it) may now help to solve a dire global health problem. More than 600 species of venomous snakes roam the earth, biting as many as 2.7 million people, killing about 120,000 people and maiming 400,000 others — numbers thought to be vast underestimates.

  • Cats bringing dead gifts

    My mother feeds a local feral cat named, Rigby. While the cat has never left dead gifts, he has been seen carrying dead animals. Most recently, a squirrel.

    There are a couple of hypotheses for why cats bring their catch home, Emmanuelle Baudry, an urban ecologist at Paris-Saclay University, told Live Science. The main hypothesis is that this behavior is maternal. In the wild, mother cats go out and hunt and then bring the food back for their kittens. This not only feeds the young cats but also provides something for them to play, practice how to hunt and recognize prey. So, in the context of human pet owners, our cats may see us as “not so efficient kittens,” Baudry said.

    But that doesn’t mean your pet is insulting you. To the contrary: “It’s somewhat of a compliment,” Liff told Live Science. “They feel comfortable in their home. They consider you part of their family.

  • Making music after death

    Popular Mechanics with an interesting art installation involving posthumous brain matter to make music.

    American composer Alvin Lucier was well-known for his experimental works that tested the boundaries of music and art. A longtime professor at Wesleyan University (before retiring in 2011), Alvin passed away in 2021 at the age of 90. However, that wasn’t the end of his lifelong musical odyssey.

    Earlier this month, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia, a new art installation titled Revivification used Lucier’s “brain matter”—hooked up to an electrode mesh connected to twenty large brass plates—to create electrical signals that triggered a mallet to strike the varying plates, creating a kind of post-mortem musical piece. Conceptualized in collaboration with Lucier himself before his death, the artists solicited the help of researchers from Harvard Medical School, who grew a mini-brain from Lucier’s white blood cells. The team created stem cells from these white blood cells, and due to their pluripotency, the cells developed into cerebral organoids somewhat similar to developing human brains.

  • Ravens mate for life and bond in flight

    A video of a bonded ravens flying.

  • Mirrors, how do they work?

    Apparently there was a whole thing on TikTok about mirrors being able to see behind a piece of paper. People emphatically stating mirrors can’t when its a little more nuanced. Mirrors break our brains.

  • Dog college

    Dog college sounds fun.

    “The most important thing is they’re doing what they love,” says Ruth Desiderio, the center’s volunteer and outreach coordinator leading the public tour I’ve joined in on. The dogs, she explains, indicate their interests and aptitude through apparent eagerness and ambivalence, and are allowed to proceed accordingly. If a dog relishes the challenge of sniffing out a hidden human, but reacts with fear to loud, sudden banging sounds–perhaps they’re destined for wilderness over urban search and rescue. If they love to smell and be rewarded, but crave routine, then a long-term post in the lab could be the perfect fit. 

  • Swallowed by a whale

    Off the coast of Chile, a kayaker was swallowed (briefly) by a whale,

    “My guess is that the whale was just as surprised as the kayaker,” Dr. Jooke Robbins, director of the Humpback Whale Studies Program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Massachusetts, wrote in an email.

    Humpback whales feed by quickly lunging through a school of fish with their mouths wide open, then straining the water out through their baleen, the fringed plates they have inside their mouths instead of teeth.

  • The brain washes itself during sleep

    Scientists uncover how the brain washes itself during sleep.

    Scientists think sleep is the brain’s rinse cycle, when fluid percolating through the organ flushes out chemical waste that accumulated while we were awake. But what propels this circulation has been uncertain. A study of mice, reported today in Cell, suggests regular contractions of blood vessels in the brain, stimulated by the periodic release of a chemical cousin of adrenaline, push the fluid along.