Wooly Spaghetti | Orchid Catfish | Medicated Poof

Judging by the holes in my socks, it feels like some products have declined in quality lately. As a measure to ensure your Convo Kit experience is always a premium one, here are some care instructions:

• Best if consumed within 2 days of delivery (expires: never)

• Benefits increase when shared with friends

• Machine wash with any colors, air dry, do NOT dry clean

-Steve

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Wooly Spaghetti

Would you eat spaghetti and mammoth? Cultivated meat company, Vow, grew the world’s first extinct meatball.

• Genetic sequencing paired with African elephant to fill in gaps

• Then inserted into sheep cells to stimulate growth

• Eating will have to wait for safety testing

Vow chose mammoth meat for shock value to get attention for its business. We won’t be dining on ancient elephants anytime soon, but lab grown meat could alleviate food shortages with lower carbon emissions. But is it actually a mammeep? A sheepoth?

Mmm-ammoth

Orchid Catfish

Orchids are really good at catfishing flies. Scientists identified how these flowers grow fake insects spots to attract male pollinators.

• Exact spot patterns vary from flower to flower

• Some have bumps that look exactly like female flies

• Males attempting to mate inadvertently collect and deposit pollen

Mimicry happens to be genes’ 2nd job when they aren’t busy moving iron or growing roots. Specifically, GdEXPA7’s texture generation keeps males around longer than simple spots. Pretty clever for a plant requiring a PhD-certified botanist to live longer than a week.

Persuasive petal power 

Medicated Poof

Besides getting a cool band-aid, getting a shot at the doctor’s isn’t very fun. So researchers developed a “MOF-Jet” that injects powdered medication pain-free.

• MOF = metal organic framework

• MOF-Jet uses zeolitic-imidazolate framework eight (ZIF-8)

• ZIF-8 works like a capsule to transport medication

Injected ZIF-8 release times can be varied depending on patient needs. Painless delivery is nice, but utilizing powdered medication also eliminates the cost for refrigerated storage. Can’t wait to get a “poof”!

We still get a cool band-aid, right?

Clickables

• Fungi on fleek - mushroom leather

• Mollusk of the year is literally “loco”

• Hold your breath for a new desktop background

• Spousal fusing mates these fish for life

• Solar tornado as tall as 14 Earths

st3v on site

Lab Grown Tim

Unmotivated by eating, st3v used leftover genes to grow his own mini-mammoth. It’s named Tim.

Unnatural Selection (poll)

Last week 75% of you said you wanted to be bitten by a radioactive tardigrade (instead of having friendly bees keeping you warm). Imagine all the work you could get done with 6 arms!

Thank you for voting! This is the end of our trial utilizing the poll feature, but it may come back in the future.

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