The Science Creative Quarterly
The Science Creative Quarterly (SCQ) is not a quarterly, but instead publishes new material at a non-linear rate. Currently, it is sleeping and in a sort of stasis (turpor?) It used to seek science writing of any genre, and your contribution would have involved checking out our submissions guidelines.
The Science Creative Quarterly (SCQ) has a single print edition so far (half SCQ pieces, and half fake science journal – see here for more details). Also, badges?
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FLORIGEN: THE HIDDEN HORMONE
Introduction It’s a mysterious substance with a mysterious past: intrigue and imprisonment followed the first suggestion of its existence, and a lifetime of labour could not discover its identity. Mikhail Khristoforovich Chailakhyan, a biologist in the USSR during Stalin’s reign, argued in 1936 that there must be a hormone – called florigen – that causes plants to produce flowers. Florigen, and the evidence for its existence that Chailakhyan amassed, was an exciting contribution to the era’s understanding of plant development and attracted considerable scientific attention. What is surprising is that florigen was also a politically radical notion. Chailakhyan’s idea was…
TRUE FACTS ABOUT THE GIANT SEQUOIA: OR WHAT KIND OF NAME IS SEQUOIADENDRON GIGANTEUM
Imagine a large tree. Now imagine a much larger tree. That is how the giant sequoia do. No, let’s try this again. Imagine a large tree. Now imagine this tree as a branch, not a tree, attached to another much larger tree. Now imagine that much larger tree. That is how the giant sequoia do. Three decades ago, a branch fell off one of the largest giant sequoia. It was 43m long. Last try: imagine a boy. He grew up in the desert, is 4 years old, has never seen a tree, but was once told how a tree looks…
BIODRIVE LEAK
A biodrive hides under a tattoo on my thigh, with enough memory to store data from neuroscience experiments I transport, airgapped. Covert pharmaceutical labs develop nootropics for troops and VIPs, cognitive enhancements and novel treatments for neurodiversities. Post-doc double agents steal data for competing labs, and rendezvous with me to transfer it to my wetware. Sometimes I toy with them. Today’s transfer is at a hackerspace. I try not to attract attention to the biodrive. They’d all want to gawk at the latest tech. The neuroscientist is late, I have to pretend to care about a demo, and when she…
EXPRESSION OF MaGc77 IS A SPECIFIC AND SENSITIVE MARKER FOR THE PATRONUS (Pt) CHROMOSOME (MGR-ABL1) TRANSLOCATION IN INHERITED MAGICAL ABILITIES
Annals of Praetachoral Mechanics (2016). Vol 2. Advanced online publication. download pdf ABSTRACT Magical abilities have been estimated to occur in about 17% of the human population. However, the cause of discrepancy between wizards/witches and muggles (non-magical humans) remains largely unknown. More surprisingly, the presence of squibs (individuals with no magical abilities despite a magical heritage) and muggle-born wizards and witches indicates a genetic component to magical abilities, which has yet to be understood. Recently, the MaGc77 protein was described as playing a potential role in the conference of magical abilities in individuals. Here we describe the underlying genetic event…
STRATIGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF FRIDAY-SUNDAY IDENTIFICATION IN RELATION TO SUGAR CONSUMPTION PREFERENCES AND RELATED DEMOGRAPHIC VARIABLES
Advanced online publication. Download pdf. *Data Analysis report for the 2015 Candy Hierarchy (raw data | source reference) ABSTRACT The 2015 Candy Hierarchy defines the quality ranking of all known candies (minus those that were not ranked). It’s really easy to analyze too. We did it. Here are the results. They reveal a natural law of those who identify as Friday people and Sunday people, which holds across time and space at a stable 2-to-1 ratio or, 66/33, or, .5/.25 depending on how many characters are left In your tweet. It confirms that Friday people are better. Suck it Sunday.…
2015 CANDY HIERARCHY: SUPPLEMENTAL RAW DATA AND NEW ANALYSES
PREAMBLE: This is for you data nerds who might want to dig into the data a little deeper (we didn’t have a lot of time to play around with it). We’ve provided access to the full excel spreadsheet (which also includes data that was cut off from our analysis due to us having to get started earlier for today’s piece on BoingBoing), as well as the ongoing data published via google sheets. We’re essentially hoping that with more rigorous analysis of the data, we might be able to find out whether there are statistically relevant differences in how different folks…
DISPATCH FROM THE E.R.
I sat down on the folding chair in front of the emergency room admitting nurse and explained what had happened: “I’ve had an accident in my laboratory.” I was expecting a dramatic reaction. Instead I got barely a raised eyebrow. It must take a lot to surprise an emergency room nurse but still, hadn’t she heard about all the superheroes that have emerged from lab experimentation gone awry (Did she not know about Spiderman, who was bitten by a radioactive spider, or The Incredible Hulk, who was irradiated by gamma rays?) Was she not curious as to what superhuman feats…
CELL BIOLOGY VIA SEVENTEEN-SYLLABLES: LESSONS THROUGH HAIKUS
Introduction Since I have a fierce love for cell biology (I did complete my BSc. in Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, after all), what follows is a brief overview of cell biology that someone in grade 12 could understand. We start with animal and plant cells, and the various organelles in each before we marvel at cell signaling for a moment, and then take a quick look at how cells use the processes of transcription and translation to produce proteins from a gene. Each section begins with a descriptive paragraph and helpful visuals, and is concluded by a series of…