Sunday 30 March 2014

Emulation

Sometimes I find an outfit that I really like, and become obsessed with recreating it with as much accuracy as possible. Sure, this can be a fairly easy task with the availability of wholesale sites that spew out fast-fashion as quickly as the trends change, but if you've been reading my blog for a while you'll know that I am very much opposed to this form of cheap-and-nasty consumerism. So, in order to recreate this outfit, I had to get out there and do some work!

The sweater was a super lucky op-shop find, spotted after an hour of searching through bins of second-hand clothing (in fact, Katie actually spotted this one - she knows my style so well). Then I found these boots second-hand for $4 - the two shoes were at entirely different ends of the store so I felt pretty damn accomplished by actually finding both of them. The soles of both shoes were also falling off (hence the $4 price tag) but I fixed this with some super-glue - now they're good as new!
However, my outfit was still incomplete without a full gingham skirt, and I wasn't able to find one anywhere, so I made one with leftover fabric from my smock dress!

Anyway, it was a mash-up of these two sporty-schoolgirl-from-the-50s outfits, from the March 2014 issue of Zipper magazine, that I was determined to emulate:
How do you think I did?
Sweater and boots are thrifted | skirt is handmade by me | headband is from Japan

Seeing as we're talking about emulation (which means to "duplicate or copy"), I thought that I would talk about this incredible work being done in synthetic biology (which is essentially the science of emulating nature)! Synthetic biology is really exciting because it means that creatures that have gone extinct might not be extinct forever! Now if you're not really sure about what DNA or chromosomes are, go here to read my post explaining them, then come back.
Yeast cells under a microscope (image source)

A team of international researchers have successfully created the first synthetic eukaryotic chromosome! This means that they built a long piece of DNA, with a very similar code to an organism (yeast) entirely from scratch. This is a world-first for eukaryotic chromosomes (yeast, plants and animals are all eukaryotes). The entire piece of DNA is 272,871 "letters" long and had to be "stitched together" from much smaller fragments to create the finished product. The researchers were then able to put the chromosome back into the yeast cell - and the yeast cells worked perfectly normally!

But one of the really awesome things is that this work was largely done by science students who are around my age! Anyone who says that "generation Y is dumb, lazy and apathetic" really doesn't know young people at all.

You can read the entire news story at Nature here (and a summary here).







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5 comments:

  1. Wow! that is so cool that you managed to create your own version of those looks :D really impressive!
    The outfit is lovely, really suits you :)


    www.violetdaffodils.blogspot.co.uk
    xx

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  2. So much casual cuteness going on in this outfit! I love the gingham skirt you made and how perfect it looks with your thrifted sweater. I get a wonderfully sporty vibe from this outfit!

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  3. Sweet pictures and a great look - seems like your goining to go into a diner soon! :)
    Kisses
    Tabea

    Auf Wolke 3

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  4. Your blog is a combination of my favorite things: Science and fashion. Cute 50s outfit in the same post as synthetic biology. Someone understands ^_^

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