#Biological and Chemical

[idontknowwhyimhere102]

MCR5 IS REAL I CAN FEEL IT IN MY NONEXISTENT BALLS

[spidersinthesky]

im flirty im fun im friends with everyone my moods change with the sun my moods change with the sun

[wutheringheightsfilm]

i honestly really don't think i'll ever be as surprised as two days ago when i found out that the gay couple in arcane everyone was gassing up was between a class traitor and a literal fascist army general. that really threw me for a loop like goddamn

[cavalierzee]

Israel’s Biological War On Gaza

Gaza is now full of skin diseases and it’s quickly getting worse.

Jake Shields

[er-cryptid]

Amino Acid Biosynthesis

Patreon

[rosy-eyedsweetpea]

I want my caretaker to call me “sweetpea” or “fairy,” a little “princess.” Someone that is everything a flower is, just a little bunny or kitty.

I want to be treated as a six-year-old again, someone innocent, someone who hasn’t caused harm to others, someone too small to see the world around her. I want to be innocent and childish, without the responsibilities of being big.

I love my paci and my blankie, my multiple plushies (especially my centi plushie,) but I want someone there to take care of me little a bunny or a kitten. I want to sleep while a motherly figure (my Miss Caretaker) sings me “Se Essa Rua Fosse Minha.”

I have been regressing since I was nine/ten-years-old, and I just got to figure it out when I was fourteen. My age tends to change a lot: if I am in a good day, I am sure I am eleven-years-old, or that I am nine-years-old, if my day is bad enough, I am six/seven-years-old (which is often,) but I involuntarily regress to three-years-old when I am so terrified and feel threatened, when things around me start to fall apart and the noise within my head gets too loud.

I make a conscious effort to remember my age, because my mind will never accept I have “grown up.”

And then, I am innocent again. I am hugging my plushies with my pacifier, crying like a little kid. The little kid I am. But no one is holding me, I am like a little kid in a room where all the lights are turned off and no one is around to comfort her.

Whenever I felt sad, my “imaginary” friends were there for me, but when they weren’t there?

I just wish I could be loved and looked at like a child again, it all feels so sad!

[jcmarchi]

Translating MIT research into real-world results

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/translating-mit-research-into-real-world-results/

Translating MIT research into real-world results

Inventive solutions to some of the world’s most critical problems are being discovered in labs, classrooms, and centers across MIT every day. Many of these solutions move from the lab to the commercial world with the help of over 85 Institute resources that comprise MIT’s robust innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) ecosystem. The Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) draws on MIT’s wealth of I&E knowledge and experience to help researchers commercialize their breakthrough technologies through the J-WAFS Solutions grant program. By collaborating with I&E programs on campus, J-WAFS prepares MIT researchers for the commercial world, where their novel innovations aim to improve productivity, accessibility, and sustainability of water and food systems, creating economic, environmental, and societal benefits along the way.

The J-WAFS Solutions program launched in 2015 with support from Community Jameel, an international organization that advances science and learning for communities to thrive. Since 2015, J-WAFS Solutions has supported 19 projects with one-year grants of up to $150,000, with some projects receiving renewal grants for a second year of support. Solutions projects all address challenges related to water or food. Modeled after the esteemed grant program of MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, and initially administered by Deshpande Center staff, the J-WAFS Solutions program follows a similar approach by supporting projects that have already completed the basic research and proof-of-concept phases. With technologies that are one to three years away from commercialization, grantees work on identifying their potential markets and learn to focus on how their technology can meet the needs of future customers.

“Ingenuity thrives at MIT, driving inventions that can be translated into real-world applications for widespread adoption, implantation, and use,” says J-WAFS Director Professor John H. Lienhard V. “But successful commercialization of MIT technology requires engineers to focus on many challenges beyond making the technology work. MIT’s I&E network offers a variety of programs that help researchers develop technology readiness, investigate markets, conduct customer discovery, and initiate product design and development,” Lienhard adds. “With this strong I&E framework, many J-WAFS Solutions teams have established startup companies by the completion of the grant. J-WAFS-supported technologies have had powerful, positive effects on human welfare. Together, the J-WAFS Solutions program and MIT’s I&E ecosystem demonstrate how academic research can evolve into business innovations that make a better world,” Lienhard says.

Creating I&E collaborations

In addition to support for furthering research, J-WAFS Solutions grants allow faculty, students, postdocs, and research staff to learn the fundamentals of how to transform their work into commercial products and companies. As part of the grant requirements, researchers must interact with mentors through MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS). VMS connects MIT entrepreneurs with teams of carefully selected professionals who provide free and confidential mentorship, guidance, and other services to help advance ideas into for-profit, for-benefit, or nonprofit ventures. Since 2000, VMS has mentored over 4,600 MIT entrepreneurs across all industries, through a dynamic and accomplished group of nearly 200 mentors who volunteer their time so that others may succeed. The mentors provide impartial and unbiased advice to members of the MIT community, including MIT alumni in the Boston area. J-WAFS Solutions teams have been guided by 21 mentors from numerous companies and nonprofits. Mentors often attend project events and progress meetings throughout the grant period.

“Working with VMS has provided me and my organization with a valuable sounding board for a range of topics, big and small,” says Eric Verploegen PhD ’08, former research engineer in MIT’s D-Lab and founder of J-WAFS spinout CoolVeg. Along with professors Leon Glicksman and Daniel Frey, Verploegen received a J-WAFS Solutions grant in 2021 to commercialize cold-storage chambers that use evaporative cooling to help farmers preserve fruits and vegetables in rural off-grid communities. Verploegen started CoolVeg in 2022 to increase access and adoption of open-source, evaporative cooling technologies through collaborations with businesses, research institutions, nongovernmental organizations, and government agencies. “Working as a solo founder at my nonprofit venture, it is always great to have avenues to get feedback on communications approaches, overall strategy, and operational issues that my mentors have experience with,” Verploegen says. Three years after the initial Solutions grant, one of the VMS mentors assigned to the evaporative cooling team still acts as a mentor to Verploegen today.

Another Solutions grant requirement is for teams to participate in the Spark program — a free, three-week course that provides an entry point for researchers to explore the potential value of their innovation. Spark is part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Innovation Corps (I-Corps), which is an “immersive, entrepreneurial training program that facilitates the transformation of invention to impact.” In 2018, MIT received an award from the NSF, establishing the New England Regional Innovation Corps Node (NE I-Corps) to deliver I-Corps training to participants across New England. Trainings are open to researchers, engineers, scientists, and others who want to engage in a customer discovery process for their technology. Offered regularly throughout the year, the Spark course helps participants identify markets and explore customer needs in order to understand how their technologies can be positioned competitively in their target markets. They learn to assess barriers to adoption, as well as potential regulatory issues or other challenges to commercialization. NE-I-Corps reports that since its start, over 1,200 researchers from MIT have completed the program and have gone on to launch 175 ventures, raising over $3.3 billion in funding from grants and investors, and creating over 1,800 jobs.

Constantinos Katsimpouras, a research scientist in the Department of Chemical Engineering, went through the NE I-Corps Spark program to better understand the customer base for a technology he developed with professors Gregory Stephanopoulos and Anthony Sinskey. The group received a J-WAFS Solutions grant in 2021 for their microbial platform that converts food waste from the dairy industry into valuable products. “As a scientist with no prior experience in entrepreneurship, the program introduced me to important concepts and tools for conducting customer interviews and adopting a new mindset,” notes Katsimpouras. “Most importantly, it encouraged me to get out of the building and engage in interviews with potential customers and stakeholders, providing me with invaluable insights and a deeper understanding of my industry,” he adds. These interviews also helped connect the team with companies willing to provide resources to test and improve their technology — a critical step to the scale-up of any lab invention.

In the case of Professor Cem Tasan’s research group in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the I-Corps program led them to the J-WAFS Solutions grant, instead of the other way around. Tasan is currently working with postdoc Onur Guvenc on a J-WAFS Solutions project to manufacture formable sheet metal by consolidating steel scrap without melting, thereby reducing water use compared to traditional steel processing. Before applying for the Solutions grant, Guvenc took part in NE I-Corps. Like Katsimpouras, Guvenc benefited from the interaction with industry. “This program required me to step out of the lab and engage with potential customers, allowing me to learn about their immediate challenges and test my initial assumptions about the market,” Guvenc recalls. “My interviews with industry professionals also made me aware of the connection between water consumption and steelmaking processes, which ultimately led to the J-WAFS 2023 Solutions Grant,” says Guvenc.

After completing the Spark program, participants may be eligible to apply for the Fusion program, which provides microgrants of up to $1,500 to conduct further customer discovery. The Fusion program is self-paced, requiring teams to conduct 12 additional customer interviews and craft a final presentation summarizing their key learnings. Professor Patrick Doyle’s J-WAFS Solutions team completed the Spark and Fusion programs at MIT. Most recently, their team was accepted to join the NSF I-Corps National program with a $50,000 award. The intensive program requires teams to complete an additional 100 customer discovery interviews over seven weeks. Located in the Department of Chemical Engineering, the Doyle lab is working on a sustainable microparticle hydrogel system to rapidly remove micropollutants from water. The team’s focus has expanded to higher value purifications in amino acid and biopharmaceutical manufacturing applications. Devashish Gokhale PhD ’24 worked with Doyle on much of the underlying science.

“Our platform technology could potentially be used for selective separations in very diverse market segments, ranging from individual consumers to large industries and government bodies with varied use-cases,” Gokhale explains. He goes on to say, “The I-Corps Spark program added significant value by providing me with an effective framework to approach this problem … I was assigned a mentor who provided critical feedback, teaching me how to formulate effective questions and identify promising opportunities.” Gokhale says that by the end of Spark, the team was able to identify the best target markets for their products. He also says that the program provided valuable seminars on topics like intellectual property, which was helpful in subsequent discussions the team had with MIT’s Technology Licensing Office.

Another member of Doyle’s team, Arjav Shah, a recent PhD from MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering and a current MBA candidate at the MIT Sloan School of Management, is spearheading the team’s commercialization plans. Shah attended Fusion last fall and hopes to lead efforts to incorporate a startup company called hydroGel.  “I admire the hypothesis-driven approach of the I-Corps program,” says Shah. “It has enabled us to identify our customers’ biggest pain points, which will hopefully lead us to finding a product-market fit.” He adds “based on our learnings from the program, we have been able to pivot to impact-driven, higher-value applications in the food processing and biopharmaceutical industries.” Postdoc Luca Mazzaferro will lead the technical team at hydroGel alongside Shah.

In a different project, Qinmin Zheng, a postdoc in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, is working with Professor Andrew Whittle and Lecturer Fábio Duarte. Zheng plans to take the Fusion course this fall to advance their J-WAFS Solutions project that aims to commercialize a novel sensor to quantify the relative abundance of major algal species and provide early detection of harmful algal blooms. After completing Spark, Zheng says he’s “excited to participate in the Fusion program, and potentially the National I-Corps program, to further explore market opportunities and minimize risks in our future product development.”

Economic and societal benefits

Commercializing technologies developed at MIT is one of the ways J-WAFS helps ensure that MIT research advances will have real-world impacts in water and food systems. Since its inception, the J-WAFS Solutions program has awarded 28 grants (including renewals), which have supported 19 projects that address a wide range of global water and food challenges. The program has distributed over $4 million to 24 professors, 11 research staff, 15 postdocs, and 30 students across MIT. Nearly half of all J-WAFS Solutions projects have resulted in spinout companies or commercialized products, including eight companies to date plus two open-source technologies.

Nona Technologies is an example of a J-WAFS spinout that is helping the world by developing new approaches to produce freshwater for drinking. Desalination — the process of removing salts from seawater — typically requires a large-scale technology called reverse osmosis. But Nona created a desalination device that can work in remote off-grid locations. By separating salt and bacteria from water using electric current through a process called ion concentration polarization (ICP), their technology also reduces overall energy consumption. The novel method was developed by Jongyoon Han, professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering, and research scientist Junghyo Yoon. Along with Bruce Crawford, a Sloan MBA alum, Han and Yoon created Nona Technologies to bring their lightweight, energy-efficient desalination technology to the market.

“My feeling early on was that once you have technology, commercialization will take care of itself,” admits Crawford. The team completed both the Spark and Fusion programs and quickly realized that much more work would be required. “Even in our first 24 interviews, we learned that the two first markets we envisioned would not be viable in the near term, and we also got our first hints at the beachhead we ultimately selected,” says Crawford. Nona Technologies has since won MIT’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, received media attention from outlets like Newsweek and Fortune, and hired a team that continues to further the technology for deployment in resource-limited areas where clean drinking water may be scarce. 

Food-borne diseases sicken millions of people worldwide each year, but J-WAFS researchers are addressing this issue by integrating molecular engineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence to revolutionize food pathogen testing. Professors Tim Swager and Alexander Klibanov, of the Department of Chemistry, were awarded one of the first J-WAFS Solutions grants for their sensor that targets food safety pathogens. The sensor uses specialized droplets that behave like a dynamic lens, changing in the presence of target bacteria in order to detect dangerous bacterial contamination in food. In 2018, Swager launched Xibus Systems Inc. to bring the sensor to market and advance food safety for greater public health, sustainability, and economic security.

“Our involvement with the J-WAFS Solutions Program has been vital,” says Swager. “It has provided us with a bridge between the academic world and the business world and allowed us to perform more detailed work to create a usable application,” he adds. In 2022, Xibus developed a product called XiSafe, which enables the detection of contaminants like salmonella and listeria faster and with higher sensitivity than other food testing products. The innovation could save food processors billions of dollars worldwide and prevent thousands of food-borne fatalities annually.

J-WAFS Solutions companies have raised nearly $66 million in venture capital and other funding. Just this past June, J-WAFS spinout SiTration announced that it raised an $11.8 million seed round. Jeffrey Grossman, a professor in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was another early J-WAFS Solutions grantee for his work on low-cost energy-efficient filters for desalination. The project enabled the development of nanoporous membranes and resulted in two spinout companies, Via Separations and SiTration. SiTration was co-founded by Brendan Smith PhD ’18, who was a part of the original J-WAFS team. Smith is CEO of the company and has overseen the advancement of the membrane technology, which has gone on to reduce cost and resource consumption in industrial wastewater treatment, advanced manufacturing, and resource extraction of materials such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel from recycled electric vehicle batteries. The company also recently announced that it is working with the mining company Rio Tinto to handle harmful wastewater generated at mines.

But it’s not just J-WAFS spinout companies that are producing real-world results. Products like the ECC Vial — a portable, low-cost method for E. coli detection in water — have been brought to the market and helped thousands of people. The test kit was developed by MIT D-Lab Lecturer Susan Murcott and Professor Jeffrey Ravel of the MIT History Section. The duo received a J-WAFS Solutions grant in 2018 to promote safely managed drinking water and improved public health in Nepal, where it is difficult to identify which wells are contaminated by E. coli. By the end of their grant period, the team had manufactured approximately 3,200 units, of which 2,350 were distributed — enough to help 12,000 people in Nepal. The researchers also trained local Nepalese on best manufacturing practices.

“It’s very important, in my life experience, to follow your dream and to serve others,” says Murcott. Economic success is important to the health of any venture, whether it’s a company or a product, but equally important is the social impact — a philosophy that J-WAFS research strives to uphold. “Do something because it’s worth doing and because it changes people’s lives and saves lives,” Murcott adds.

As J-WAFS prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, we look forward to continued collaboration with MIT’s many I&E programs to advance knowledge and develop solutions that will have tangible effects on the world’s water and food systems.

Learn more about the J-WAFS Solutions program and about innovation and entrepreneurship at MIT.

[4rmins]

hate telling ppl what my majors are cus then it’s like “oh you must be really smart” NO!!! i’m just ambitious as FUCK!!!!!! smartness has nothing to do with it cus a SMART person wouldn’t choose chemical engineering!!!!! only dumbass ppl who have something to prove or ppl who love money go to this major!!!

tbh im only here for “im a chemical engineer” bragging rights my second major is biological sciences but thats cus i rlly jus wanna be a marine biologist…..

[quixoticanarchy]

having worked in public health emergency preparedness for a couple years puts an interesting slant on my current interest spiral around chemical weapons, and now biological also. like.. one of the primary raisons d'être for the very existence of public health emergency preparedness as a field is concerns about 'bioterror.' anthrax, tularemia, plague, botulism. we would run simulation exercises and make plans about how to mass distribute doxycycline and ciprofloxacin to the local population. we would talk about what was the closest location with a cache of atropine to treat nerve gas (or just organophosphate) poisoning. still, the CBRNE plans where I worked were the absolute weakest link in our preparedness arsenal, bar none. there barely was a plan. there was a document with an outline.

and then with that background, I'll read about the history of US experiments with weaponizing anthrax, tularemia, plague, botulism, q fever, crop molds and diseases, etc. not that it comes as a surprise, but it's nonetheless remarkable how much money and effort the federal government pours into doing bioterror, and how little into managing its health effects. and it's ironic to think how much public health emergency preparedness feeds into notions of shoring up 'national security' and never imagines that the threats they would face could come from the hallowed halls of the national security state itself.

like. experimenting with diseases you can inflict on your enemies? intentionally increasing the lethality of those diseases? all blatantly appalling ethics aside, is infecting people whose governments you don't like or killing their crops or their livestock or poisoning their air or water or soil really worth introducing new threats that may very well come back to bite you? diseases spread; that's perhaps one of their hallmark qualities. I know that blowback does tend to come as a lamentable surprise, somehow, to the actors who engender it, but. jfc. it's like pouring gasoline on both your enemies and yourself while all the while designing better matches, and, I suppose, holding a small cup of water in your free hand.

[silvesi]

BLAH *throws a sylvari at you*

Hi, this is Lik. Yes, pronounced like lick. It stuck. Nope, I have not finished the design! But, alas:

My friend here got them She/it pronouns and is within Feds group of mordrem buddies after the end of HoT. "Scholar" who only existed for a single month before mordremoth awoke, therefore is a lanky stick with absolutely NO cool mordrem beastie stuff, only issues Inside Her Brain.

.

Acts like a scholar whilst having none of the basic scientific/whatever understanding of one, so just gathers so much data. This gal has so many random lists and catalogues bc it shuts up the brain issues a tiny bit. Feds ADORES IT and regularly gives her SO MUCH MONEY because my guy LOVES the science but HATES the data processing. Has definitely paid her to do titrations, because he'd rather die.

Her usefulness should not be underestimated, but likely often is by people who do not know it.

.

An uncanny understanding of the other mordrem and so, so good with them, so nicey, would be a good therapist for them as due to it's lack of socialisation with 'normal' sylvari she instead learnt new and exciting shrimp emotions and socialisation.

However if u put her with anyone that isnt mordrem I think she just *standing man emoji*

.

I ALSO think she's gonna end up as some sort of an apprentice to Fedsy, entirely by mistake. It just HAPPENED and now he's kinda adopted her?? congrats on that, man.

[ciricegh0st]

im mushy and cheesy i know but seeing the bands that gave me such comfort in truly horrible times being so happy on stage, finally in a good place in their lives and doing what they love together makes me want to hold on a little longer to enjoy them and to also feel like them one day

[captain--steve--rogers]

I’m sorry i can’t some of them didn’t even change clothes before they got in bed and Meme and America say the clothes STINK so like

[jazzy-a]

Does anyone else start doing bad stuff like biting the inside of their cheek/lip/grinding their teeth, or something else, and go:

"Damn it. Why did I just start up again? Am I stressed? What's wrong with me?"

And then promptly look over and see the water bottle you haven't f*cking touched since you woke up and go-

"Oh, yeah... water. I should drink some of that."

[er-cryptid]

Gastroenterology Drugs

Antacid Drugs -- treat heartburn -- neutralize acid from the stomach

Antibiotic Drugs -- treat gastrointestinal infections caused by bacteria -- not effective against viral infections

Antidiarrheal Drugs -- treat diarrhea -- slow peristalsis -- increase water absorption

Antiemetic Drugs -- treat nausea and vomiting -- treat motion sickness

Drugs for Gallstones -- dissolve gallstones -- used instead of surgical removal

H2 Blocker Drugs -- treat gastroesophageal reflux disease -- treat peptic ulcers -- block H2 receptors in the stomach -- H2 = histamine 2 -- H2 triggers the release of HCl

Laxative Drugs -- treat constipation -- soften stool -- add dietary fiber -- stimulate intestinal mucosa

Proton Pump Inhibitor Drugs -- treat gastroesophageal reflux disease -- treat peptic ulcers -- block final step in production of HCl

.

Patreon

[guiltyidealist]

People will be like you were born without vagina you were born a man you are forever and always a man no matter what you say and no matter how you present and no matter how you modify your body and sex characteristics you'll die a man

And then they're like just because you were born without Do Things Chemicals doesn't mean you are unable to do things stop making excuses

[sanctifiedtongues]

but also...the way they carry out the scarecrow plot at least in the dark knight trilogy (i am extremely unaware of how it's handled in comics and i haven't watched any of the batman animated series episodes that focus on him i think he's like an actual scarecrow there lmfao) is deeply carceral in its thinking: mental illness and instability is specifically used as a ploy to keep criminals from "facing justice" in essence, keeping them out of the prison/criminal justice system and instead kept within the psychiatric incarceration system (basically just arkham asylum in gotham). like it is certainly not downplaying the power of the psychiatric apparatus but of course it's just kind of individualized within jonathan crane himself, who gets a personal sadistic kick out of bringing hardened criminals protected by corrupt external systems of government and turning them into frightened shells of themselves that are denied autonomy (of course) who have no choice but to be brought under arkham's care. but we're supposed to view this and think that the horror is all about them not facing justice and seeing a therapist instead when it's something like much much more evil that is done to like irl ppl with some medications. and of course it completely ignores the intertwining of the prison/psychiatric apparatuses and how uh yeah prison does fuck up your mental health. but uh well that's batman for you.