Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
Dasia Taylor has juiced about three dozen beets in the last 18 months. The root vegetables, she’s found, provide the perfect dye for her invention: suture thread that changes color, from bright red to dark purple, when a surgical wound becomes infected.
The 17-year-old student at Iowa City West High School in Iowa City, Iowa, began working on the project in October 2019, after her chemistry teacher shared information about state-wide science fairs with the class. As she developed her sutures, she nabbed awards at several regional science fairs, before advancing to the national stage. This January, Taylor was named one of 40 finalists in the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the country’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors.
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“I’ve done a lot of racial equity work in my community, I’ve been a guest speaker at several conferences,” says Taylor. “So when I was presented with this opportunity to do research, I couldn’t help but go at it with an equity lens.”
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Taylor spent most of her time after school in the Black History Game Show, a club she’s been a member of since eighth grade, and attending weekly school board and district meetings to advocate for an anti-racist curriculum. For the four months leading up to her first regional science fair in February 2020, Taylor committed Friday afternoons to research under the guidance of her chemistry teacher, Carolyn Walling.
Healthy human skin is naturally acidic, with a pH around five. But when a wound becomes infected, its pH goes up to about nine. Changes in pH can be detected without electronics; many fruits and vegetables are natural indicators that change color at different pH levels.
“I found that beets changed color at the perfect pH point,” says Taylor. Bright red beet juice turns dark purple at a pH of nine. “That’s perfect for an infected wound. And so, I was like, ‘Oh, okay. So beets is where it’s at.’”
Next, Taylor had to find a suture thread that would hold onto the dye. She tested ten different materials, including standard suture thread, for how well they picked up and held the dye, whether the dye changed color when its pH changed, and how their thickness compared to standard suture thread. After her school transitioned to remote learning, she could spend four or five hours in the lab on an asynchronous lesson day, running experiments.
A cotton-polyester blend checked all the boxes. After five minutes under an infection-like pH, the cotton-polyester thread changes from bright red to dark purple. After three days, the purple fades to light gray.
Working with an eye on equity in global health, she hopes that the color-changing sutures will someday help patients detect surgical site infections as early as possible so that they can seek medical care when it has the most impact. Taylor plans to patent her invention. In the meantime, she’s waiting for her final college admissions results.
i hope they find a stupid tiny fish or something on mars and make mining illegal, just like the devil’s hole in california
these endangered bastards and their bathtub-sized habitat (just the surface shelf of a giant cave structure thanks) singlehandedly pissed off SO many businessmen lol
It was simple curiosity. The curiosity of a single man that destroy the universe and created a new one. A new universe, your world was born. The single man was reborn as a god and created a system. As the world advanced to each further stage, it was inherited by generations of different life forms oversee by the single god. As time goes on the single god was defeated by the new god the he himself created. Thus this world has become stagnant. It has expired. Therefore I must ask you it new god. Will you allow the world continue to stagnate? Or will you let it evolve to the next level? The choice is yours to make. – Anon Guest
It is, when one thinks about it, the ultimate power. The power to create. There could be a plan, points in a straight line that joins aleph to omigh. There could be fiddling and twiddling just to see what happens next. Give them curiosity and a tree from which they must not eat. Will they obey or will they take the knowledge of good and evil? Was it an ineffable plan or a quixotic creator messing about with things. Were apocalypses part of the endless cycle of time, or was the creator just tired of messing about with Pleistocene? Only one could ever know, and they weren’t in the habit of talking to anyone.
Until now.
Iam had thought they were alone, until the Voice spoke from the firmament. You have made many things, the Voice said. It is good.
Iam reached out to the Voice. “And who are you?” they spake.
Any government or system that wouldn’t give this poor kid a walker for free should be overthrown
And assuming that this DIY one is perfectly capable, if an acceptable one can be slapped together with parts found at the local Home Depot, maybe we need to ask why insurance corporations are charging so much for one in the first place.
Once we no longer have to support a handful of parasitic billionaires, medical costs would drop greatly.
This
Hello, a walker user here. My walker is not custom made nor a pediatric one, but it is one of the better ones: it’s lighweight, foldable, with 4 wheels and a comfortable seat. I had to pay about 30€ for it. My insurance would fully cover the cheaper ones but my doctor and i chose this one because it better suits my needs. Conclusion: walkers are not that expensive and a less fucked up healthcare system would definitely cover this little boy’s mobility aids.
