The Straight Wings I

At this point of evolution, insects can fold their wings!

The current phylogeny tells us two things:
1) Termites are nothing more than social cockroaches.
2) Mantises are close relatives to cockroaches.

The Orthopterans are all legs ...

Hello Non-Insect Hexapods and Primitive Insects

I feel so tired of doing homework ... but that's sort of preparing for my exam right?

This is the Insect ID Project for Entomology 302.
They are arranged from the most primitive to the most advanced, in the evolutionary sense.
Being primitive doesn't mean they're inferior, just means that they still possess more ancestral features.

Men-ups

LOL nice photo set!
And so colorful too!

Men-ups!


By the way, an interesting track.

Post-Midterm Movie

I had enough! I've been generally very busy, but since last week, I've done nothing except studying and eating, and have not gotten enough sleep.

Finally the midterm week ended (for me), so I decided not to study tonight.

I made myself Thai chicken and eggplant yellow curry and ate it with baguette.

I believe it's a Vietnamese thing to eat baguette with curry.
The baguette was the kind hard enough to hit people with. It was so hard to cut.
French people are so smart to invent this. If you carry a few while traveling, eat them when you're hungry, and use them as weapon when attacked by bandits.

Although I was tired, I went to the movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part II.
That was a great choice after midterm, wasn't it?

Dill Grew Up

I was so worried that I would run out of dill and Dill would be starving. I knew butterflies in this genus eat plants of the family Apiaceae, but I wasn't sure if Dill would accept if I suddenly switched its diet. It turned out that it seemed to like parsley even more, and got fatter each day. I was so happy!

How Early Chemists Analyzed Spectroscopy

The spectroscopy we studied in class was first used in the early 60's. In infrared NMR, the position of the peaks represent the functional groups the protons attached to. In proton NMR, the integral (area) under the peaks represent the number of the group of chemically equivalent protons. There were no computer to help draw the diagram or calculate the integral. How did the early chemists complete the task?

My chemistry professor said, they adjusted the infrared frequency a little each time, dotted down the absorption, and then hand-curved the dots.

How about proton NMR? Did they used grid paper and calculated the integral by calculus? It would be hard to do because the peaks are not perfect, smooth curves. They used a even more primitive method: printed out the diagram on paper of uniform thickness, cut the peaks, and weighed them to obtain the ratio.

Early scientists are great people ... Phew, I'm so glad that we don't have to do that today

Kooky Isomerism

Wait, those things are molecules? I hesitated for a second to decide whether it's a real molecules or just a flattened box.

Recipe: Golden Harvest

I actually made this dish last week. I got a bunch of radish and the farmer told me to eat raw. They were too spicy! So my initial idea was to cook it to get rid of the spiciness. I ended up adding everything left in the fridge into it.

It actually tasted great! I decided to write a recipe.
It's named because most of the ingredients came from FH King CSA, Farmers' Market, and Willy Street Co-op.

Watch Out the Action Potential!

Hi psychoactive molecules,

Neurotransmitters are generally pretty benign and non-aggressive; but if you do piss them off, some of them can drain your psychoactive power and some can fire out an action potential!
 
For your info, action potentials are fired out by excitatory neurotransmitters. When you meet inhibitory neurotransmitters, your power just doesn't work at all. Sometimes watch out for the tiny calcium ion bullets too!

P.S. The appearance/clothes of Dopamine and Serotonin are just temporary and random.

Dill

I found out that the herb I put into my saute dish and rice was dill. There were a lot of farmers selling dills at the Farmers' Market.

I found a caterpillar on the dill. Because the idea of boiling it and making it into a specimen made me cry, so I decided to keep it.

My classmate told me it's a black swallowtail. Well, I'll have to keep it outside when it turns into a pupa so it can emerge successfully in the spring. That's what butterflies in cold places do.

Should I call it Dill? It apparently eats dill. lol
Good taste. This genus of butterflies only eat those aromatic plants.