√ Today’S E-Watering Hole: Electrons, Not Water

In traveling to and from New York back in June, we had to stop in Phoenix and then there was a 3+ hour delay on our flight. It turned out that tons of teenagers who were part of some traveling group were on the same flight so they all camped out in the airport during the delay. I was struck by how they gravitated to the electrical outlets, sometimes stretching out on the floor next to them.

One student even plugged in a multi prong surge protector so they could collectively charge more stuff together. See it hanging in the middle near the floor.

This is the new watering hole of society with electrons as the focus.

And for a fun juxtaposition, I’ve put a picture I took of an old-fashioned bicycle at a Brooklyn flea market.

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√ Tgif: Wacky Picture Caption Contest

OK, it’s been a long week of science so time for some fun: a caption contest.

I took the below wacky picture at a place here in California because I was struck by how odd this situation looks.

I think it deserves some clever caption. What is the best or funniest possible caption?

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√ Where I Discover An Alligator (Lizard) In My Garden

If you garden long enough you may start to see some cool critters. We had an unusually wet winter and very hot, dry summer here in Davis, CA. Maybe it’s coincidence, but the range of creatures in my garden seems different. For instance, I’ve been seeing much bigger dragon flies this year and a lot more lizards.

A few days ago I saw a very unusual lizard (see above).

What a tail! What gene expression makes that unusual tail? The reddish color of the lizard was also striking.

As best as I can tell this is a California Alligator Lizard, but it could be another kind of alligator lizard as well as several types live in this part of California. Here’s a page on information and photos on California Alligator Lizards.

One of the cool things about lizards including alligator lizards is that they have regenerative potential far beyond that of us humans. For lizards, this regeneration often involves regrowing their tails that can come off as they pursued and grabbed by predators. This regeneration can involve stem cells (of course) and in some species regeneration invokes a unique regenerative structure called a blastema. I’ve written in the past about blastemas and regeneration. If only humans could regenerate this well, possibly via blastemas, right? But maybe not for growing us tails?

I imagine the particular alligator lizard I encountered in my garden hasn’t lost its tail given how amazingly long it is. I bet this “alligator” is eating lots of insects so I hope it and its future family stick around.

For more photos from my yard and elsewhere see here.

One of my favorite past set of photos is of praying mantises and spiders hunting bees on sunflowers in my garden.

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√ Photographic Tour Of Cascade Mountains By Air

I recently flew up to Seattle from Sacramento to visit the UW Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine (ISCRM).

It was a great trip just on the science front and seeing some old friends from the UW and the Hutch, as well as making some new ones (yeah, corny, but true).

I not only love stem cell research but also nature and I’ve got a weakness for aerial photography of landscapes and especially mountains.

This post includes some photos I took from the planes I was on heading up north and then back south. There are shown in no particular geographic order.

First photo at left: Mt. St. Helens in the foreground with evidence of its huge eruption in 1980 and Mt. Adams to the east. You can see the live volcano cam of this peak here.

I remember when I was 13 years old watching the major eruption on TV and either then or with one of the smaller earlier eruptions we thought we could see the plume from a hill in Bellevue looking south.

Isn’t it striking to see two similar mountains juxtaposed like this, one with a top and one that blew its top off during a massive volcanic eruption?

Mt. Rainier at sunset from the west.

I’m surprised what a good job iPhone 6 does with pics including through an airplane window. For other nature and science-related garden photos I’ve taken see here.

The Three Sisters Mountains, Oregon from jet above.

 

Mt. Hood at sunset. I remember some fun up there at the Reed College Ski Cabin!

 

Fog pouring into canyons near Puget Sound.

 

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√ Asilomar: Great Science Plus Shells, Flowers On The Beach

Asilomar is known in the field of biomedical sciences as a great place to go for small meetings.

I was there recently for the First Annual Bay Area Stem Cell Conference, which I helped to organize. It was an exciting meeting and all the presenters (except keynoters) were trainees. The amount of great stem cell science being done by these and other young researchers is amazing. They are the future of science and medicine.

From the data presented at the meeting, one could also see the many potential translational paths to the bedside. These kinds of bench-to-bedside connections ranged from development of treatments for genetic diseases to new insights into different types of cancer to heart disease research to efforts at increased milk production for women having trouble nursing. That last topic was probably the most unexpected for me. The presentations included almost every type of stem cells.

Overall, the science was great.

Asilomar also has a beautiful beach. It’s just south of Monterey, but I’ve never seen so many shells on the beaches in Monterey. More generally, I always find the beach to be like a magnet for me and I enjoy taking photos (you can see some past nature and garden photos here). In this post I’ve included a few of my favorite pics from a walk on the beach on this recent visit to Asilomar.

Anyone know what plants these flowers are?

They must be incredibly salt tolerant to be right on the beach dunes.

The “stars” on the yellow flowers looked like the sugary parts of Lucky Charms cereal.

Asilomar Beach flowers.

I’ve never seen a beach have so many striking shells all in one place as Asilomar. You could easily make several necklaces if you wanted to. I don’t know if it’s always this way or if a storm washed all these in here recently, but it was striking.

 

 

More Beach flowers. They are essentially growing in pure sand with lots of salt in it.

Asilomar beach shows that the ocean here has highly varied sea life.

 

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