LadySun's New Writeups

The rise of Interstate Highways (thing)

2004-03-27T02:43:56Z

In the mid-to-late 1800's, roads were mostly considered the responsibility of the municipalities through which they ran. Taxes were collected to support them, but monies were poorly spent, and roads lacked proper maintenance. The rise of the bicycle as a popular mode of transportation brought about public interest in roads, and the Good Roads movement was started in various states. In 1891, New Jersey became the first state to offer state aid to municipalities for the upkeep of their thoroughfares. It was not until the turn of the 20th century, however, that the federal government began to take an interest.

With the advent of the automobile, Americans found themselves blessed with an opportunity and an option they had never before considered -- interstate travel for tourism and pleasure without extensive time or money commitments. The first interstate "roads", however, were woefully unequipped for any sort of regular travel; most roads…

Five Bucks Says Blood Bounces on Ice: Another Jersey Shore Noder Gathering (place)

2003-01-12T19:09:11Z

UPDATE: I have just purchased a block of tickets for this game, at the fabulously low price of $6 each. HOWEVER, I have 30 tickets and only 17 definites. Something told me I was going to have some sort of problem no matter how many I got. Go fuckin' figure.

Chris-O says How can you not come to a gathering with blood in the title?

Those of you who came to/saw pictures from the last trip know pretty much all there is to do in Atlantic City in the middle of winter -- drink, gamble, and debauch under the piers.

Well, we found something else to do down there:

HOCKEY.

really lousy hockey. …

Kary B. Mullis (person)

2002-12-24T03:52:13Z

B. December 28, 1944
Nobel Prize, Chemistry, 1993 with Michael Smith

Kary Banks Mullis was born to parents Cecil Banks Mullis and Bernice Alberta Barker Mullis in rural North Carolina. For the first few years of his life, he and his family lived near his maternal grandparents' farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The family later moved to the vicinity of Columbia, South Carolina, where Kary went to high school. He received his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Georgia Tech, where he met and married his first wife, Richards. During his career at Georgia Tech, his wife bore him a daughter, Louise.

Mullis and company moved to Berkeley, California, in 1966, with Kary in pursuit of his Ph.D. in biochemistry (1972) under the tutelage of J.B. Neilands, now a distinguished professor emeritus of the…

Clifford the Big Red Dog (person)

2002-11-25T03:09:11Z

First a book series, now a cartoon series, "Clifford the Big Red Dog" has been delighting children and parents alike for almost 40 years. The concept of the oversized, "all-around" dog was conceived by author Norman Bridwell in the early 1960's, as he was trying to get into the world of children's book illustrating. His drawings were panned by editors as overly simplistic; one editor at Harper and Row finally gave Bridwell the advice he needed during a particularly harsh denial. She told him to think about writing a story to go with his drawings. And thus was the Big Red Dog born.

The dog was originally named "Tiny", but thankfully, Bridwell's wife thought that was boring and suggested the name of one of her childhood imaginary friends, Clifford. Clifford's owner, Emily Elizabeth, was named for Bridwell's infant daughter. The completed book was sent to Scholastic Press, who picked up the book within three weeks of receiving it.

Clifford the Big Red Dog is the size of a two-story…

epitope (thing)

2002-11-24T22:36:04Z

Epitopes serve as the immune system's "on" switch; an epitope is the part of a foreign protein that identifies the protein as foreign to the immune system. In other words, the immune system has evolved in such a way as to recognize certain protein signature sequences (called epitopes) as "non-self" and possibly detrimental to "self". These sequences therefore serve as signals to activate the immune response.

When foreign bodies (usually bacteria or viruses) enter the bloodstream, they are taken up by antigen-presenting cells (APCs) such as macrophages. The macrophages then break down the bacteria or viruses or whatever and incorporate their composite proteins, called antigens, into proteins called major histocompatibility complex class II (MHC-II) proteins. These MHC-II proteins are then sent to the cell membrane, where they present the antigens to T cells. The T cells determine whether the proteins presented are compatible with known "self"…

prion (thing)

2002-11-12T02:51:50Z

The concept of an infectious protein, or "prion", was first proposed in relationship to scrapie in sheep (Prusiner, 1982) as a "protein-dependent protein synthesis" model for the cause of the disease. That is, it was thought possible that a unique protein mediated and, in theory, performed its own peptide synthesis, independent of DNA or RNA. In order to be considered infectious, the protein would have to be capable of both transmission of itself (release) and regeneration (Wickner et al., 2002); therefore, the protein must encode itself, enhance its own replication, or affect its post-synthetic structure. Griffith (1967), mindful of the fundamentals of molecular biology, proposed that since proteins do not encode themselves, the scrapie-causing protein must either enhance its own transcription, or have an altered conformation that forces reconformation of the normal cellular protein into the infectious form. Current hypotheses follow the "altered…