We are on a short break from our audio podcast; however, we are still delivering our science round ups in written form here on our blog.

Our Science Round Up is brought to you by Bio-techne.  Bio-techne brings together the prestigious life science research brands of R&D Systems, Novus Biologicals, Tocris Bioscience, and Protein Simple to provide stem cell researchers with high quality reagents that will optimize and standardize their workflow.

This Science Round Up includes several research paper and article summaries including papers covering: the science of blowing bubbles, effective ways to quit smoking, efficacy of the female viagra, mutation of head lice, sperm made from stem cells, cancer killing stem cells derived from skin, how stem cells can help treat an aggressive form of prostate cancer, and culturing stem cells too close together may render them genomically instable.   Enjoy.

SCIENCE BREADTH

The Science Behind Blowing Bubbles

Ahh bubbles, who doesn’t love bubbles floating through the air.  I’ve actually said that if bubbles were floating around everywhere the world would be a happier place.  But what’s the secret to blowing good bubbles?  A french group looked through centuries of data regarding blowing bubbles but could not come up with a good explanation.  So, they took it upon themselves to figure it out. And the best part is how they did it.  A team of French scientists built this machine that basically blew bubbles at different speeds through a fixed size opening.  What did they find?  That its the speed of the blowing gust of air the generates the perfect bubble, not the thickness of the soapy film.  Geez.  I think I could have told them that and spared them the time and effort.  Cool and fun nonetheless.   [Read more…]