Rainy Day & Silkworms

The rain has been relentless for the past few days in Sydney, and isn't forecast to stop for a sizeable chunk of the week. It's good in a way, because going from winter to summer in Italy next week will be made even lovelier after coming from such awful weather, but it's also very frustrating because I had about 50 different outfits to post here before I left! I have been wanting some kitty shoes for such a long time now, though I'm glad I held out for these ones because they actually fit me (unlike all the pairs I tried to squeeze my feet into while I was in Tokyo earlier this year). These ones are awesome - they are both suede and creeper-style with a slight heel, and, well, they have cat faces on them. And anything with a cat face is basically instantly fantastic. dress - c/o Sheinside belt - Vintage cardigan - Forever 21 (old) socks - c/o OASAP hat - c/o Wholesale shoes - c/o Sammydress I always wanted to design my own wedding dress, if I were to one day get married. I always thought that I'd just design the structure of the dress, but now that I'm going into molecular biology, maybe I'll be able to help make the fabric too - and own the geekiest dress ever. This dress was made out of silk from transgenic silkworms, who can produce glowing silk. Image source These glowing silkworms are created by inserting a sequence of DNA that encodes a glowing fluorescent protein into the same region of the DNA that encode the instructions for making silk proteins. So the silkworms are exactly the same as ordinary silkworms, and still make silk in the same way, except that their silk comes out glowing. The medical applications of silk are vast, and it is now commonly used in medicine and surgery. Because the body's immune system doesn't reject silk, it can be used to make artificial arteries and other tissues. But being able to work with a glowing material, that is clearly distinguishable from human flesh, could potentially make things are lot easier for surgeons! Although making a glowing dress out of the glowing silk maybe isn't as necessary an advance as making glowing arteries, it was a good way to draw attention to the research, and well, it's also pretty damn cool. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Follow The Pineneedle Collective on Bloglovin'

If you have been living under a rock in blog-land, google reader will be shutting down on the 1st of July. But don't stress, there are plenty of other ways that you can keep up with my blog (if you are so inclined). You can either follow me through Bloglovin' (and you can also import all the blogs you are following on google reader by clicking here), Facebook (here) and Twitter (here)! Each new post will appear on all three of these platforms. I hope you're all having a nice day! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Hot Air Balloons and Aeroplanes

Les Folles Marquises, a gorgeous little etsy store, sent me some of the cutest ever necklaces! I can't even tell you how in love I am with this handmade doll necklace. I wore it to my exam as my good-luck charm (not that I'm at all superstitious nor believe she bestowed good luck upon me, but being able to look at the necklace during my exam did make me smile! Which has gotta help, right?) As a side note, Les Folles Marquises, according to google translate, is "The Crazy Canopies" in English - any French speakers want to tell me if that is at all correct? What a cute name for a cute store, though! And although you'll all know me as an advocate of cheap clothes, if something is handmade this well, it's definitely worth paying more for. I've been making some pretty great thrift-shop finds lately, like this pink cardigan and velvet fitted blazer. Every winter I only ever seem to have one cardigan and one coat which I end up wearing every day, which just makes winter even more depressing, so this year I am making an effort to own quite a few different coats, sweaters and cardigans so I can mix and match them (almost) as frequently as my dresses! Op-shops are definitely the best place to get coats and cardigans from, especially as they are usually under $10 - I don't think I've owned many "new" ones in quite a number of years. dress - c/o Sheinside necklace - c/o Les Folles Marquises cardigan - Thrifted blazer - Thrifted hat - c/o Wholesale socks - c/o OASAP shoes - Yeswalker And isn't this balloon-print Sheinside dress super cute, and just the perfect amount of quirky? Speaking of Sheinside, I have the winner of the Sheinside giveaway to announce. Is this you below? If so... congratulations! You have won a $100 gift voucher to spend at Sheinside. And I highly recommend the dress I am currently wearing ;) So I'm going on an plane to Italy in just a week's time from now. Whenever I go on an aeroplane, at at least one point in the flight I will freak out and go "HOW ARE WE POSSIBLY DOING THIS?!" Knowing really nothing about physics, I am as ignorant as caveman trying to comprehend a smartphone (in fact... I don't really know much about that one, either). I just think that the fact that something as big and heavy as a plane full of people hanging around apparently weightless in the air is insane. And if anyone asked me how planes stayed in the air, I probably wouldn't be able to give them a very good answer, either, apart from mumbling something vague about thrust and lift. And I like to know how things work, rather than just blindly accepting them as fact. So flight is actually kind of simple on the surface. There are four main forces all vying for dominance of your aircraft. You have thrust, which is what the engines provide - propelling you forward - drag, which pulls you backwards, weight, which drags you back down towards the earth, and lift, which is the one that holds you up in the air and is provided by the wings. Lift is the one that helps hold a super heavy object up in the air, and is the cause of my freaking-out. (Image source) Aeroplane wings give you lift, because of the relative differences in speed between a solid object (the wings) and a fluid object (the air). The wing deflects the air above and below the wing, splitting it into two directions. The shape of the wing makes sure that the air that goes over the top moves faster than the air on the bottom. And when air speeds up, its pressure drops, so there is more pressure pushing up from the bottom of the wing, than from the top of the wing. That's how you get lifted up into the air! The speed of sound is what is known as "Mach 1", and commercial planes don't fly this fast, however, the plane I am going on travels at Mach 0.85. That is 85% of the speed of sound, or about 280 metres per second. That is just a little over 1000 kilometres an hour (621 mph). That's... really, really fast. And a good way to segue into this XKCD comic. Speculative physics is even more fun than actual physics. If you could make a stereo fly past someone at twice the speed of sound (Mach 2), then would it sound like it was playing backwards to someone who was sitting by? The answer is yes, the song would sound like it was playing backwards. The stereo is flying faster than the sound it is playing can travel (sound travels at the speed of... well... sound), so the stereo would reach you first, followed by the sound it emitted one second ago, then two seconds ago, then three seconds ago, etc. I can hardly wrap my head around it, but I think that it is one of the coolest thought experiments ever (plus, it's an awesome fact to tell people at parties). Read the whole comic here (especially if you've never seen XKCD's 'What If?' site before.) Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Rose Gardens and Space Telescopes

I am a very happy lady tonight, because I have finished my exams! I think my weeks of non-stop studying really paid off as well, which makes finishing them all the sweeter. Nonetheless, I am going to be doing some mad blogging for the next week or so before I head off overseas, so if you visit here daily you'll almost certainly see something new each time ;) Isn't this dress Sheinside sent me gorgeous? It just makes me want to have a picnic in a rose garden. Unfortunately I couldn't find any roses to take photos among - it being the middle of winter in Sydney and all. This pretty park did a good job serving as the backdrop, though. I was so happy with the shoes that Yeswalker sent me as part of a sponsored post a few months ago (these ones) that I went and bought a couple of pairs with my own money, these red ones included. They're soooo cute and comfortable, and were also sent with free postage. I got two pairs for $15 each which is seriously good. These are going to be my Italy-trip walking-shoes! (I will never ever wear practical walking shoes, not even for travelling. Sorry, feet, but runners are just too ugly.) dress - c/o Sheinside cardigan - Thrifted tights - c/o OASAP necklace - c/o Merrin & Gussy hat - c/o Wholesale shoes - Yeswalker You guys. This is the power of crowd-funding. 12,000 people (at the time I write this) have pledged money to a kickstarter project to fund an educational Space Telescope called ARKYD. There's 10 days left if you want to get yourself a "space selfie" (in fact, I think that's probably half the reason why the project has done so well. I am considering getting a space selfie of my favourite outfit just so I can put it on the blog in a science segment. If enough of you tell me that I should...). Right now though, I'm completely exhausted (and vaguely aware that I might be writing nonsense) so I will leave it at that. Good night from Sydney, and I hope you're all having/have had a super good day! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

Thrifted Outift & Hybrids

This is a super comfortable outfit, which I have been wearing various iterations of (minus the wig) for basically the entire past week. I am so excited to finally be finished with exams in 4 days now, and getting back into some blogging! I really, really dislike exam time (who would like exams though, right?) because it involves a whole lot of not sleeping and stress-eating, and of course, not having any time to blog! sweater - Thrifted dress -Thrifted belt - Thrifted hat - c/o Wholesale Necklace - Claire's (Japan)   Here's another cool thing from my exam-cramming (and more proof that studying science can be really interesting, whining about exams aside). Zebroids are the types of animals you get when a horse breeds with a zebra (yep, that can happen!) However, because of what is known as "epigenetics", depending on if the mum or the dad was the horse or the zebra, the resulting offspring can vary greatly. (image source) I've talked about hybrid animals before (here), but never understood why the resulting offspring was different, depending on who the parent was. For example, a cross between a female lion and a male tiger results in a tigon. But a cross between a male lion and a female tiger results in a liger. Tigons and ligers, although both having one tiger parent and one lion parent, vary greatly in their characteristics. Ligers are really really big, whereas tigons are just the same size as their parents. Below is a baby liger. Let me emphasise that. A baby liger. (image source) Why does which one was the mother, and which one was the father, cause such massive differences in the offspring? Epigenetic imprinting is the cause of this. Certain genes can be switched on or off by a process called "methylation". Maternal (mum) genes and paternal (dad) genes are methylated in different places from each other. So you get one set of genes from your mother, and one from your father. When they combine, there is almost like a competition for whose genes will be silenced, and whose genes will be expressed. Because of imprinting, depending on who the parent is, the genes that are ultimately expressed vary - leading to both ligers and tigons - even though the DNA sequence does not change (ligers and tigons are extremely genetically related, even though they look very different from one another). Now I've got to get back to studying ;) You may not hear from me for a few days - I've got an exam tomorrow worth a ridiculous 75% of the course, and then another on Thursday! Anyway, wish me luck! Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr

The Illusion of Reality

So I'm blogging again so soon... but I swear I'm not procrastinating on studying (maybe!)  Even though I've been non-stop studying the last few days, do you think I'd just wear comfortable clothes? Nah. This is about as "comfy" as I'll get, haha. I actually spent the morning in my pyjamas, but it's also nice to get dressed up for no reason - I feel like it helps me maintain my sanity! Which, at exam time, is always a good thing. pants - c/o Sheinside sweater - Thrifted necklace - Claire's (Japan) beanie - stolen from boyfriend Here's more stuff that I'm trying to cram for my exams! But it's super interesting, don't worry ;) So much of what we think are solid "facts" about the world we live in are entirely made up by our brains. I didn't realise this until this year, but there is nothing inherently "blue" about an electromagnetic wavelength of 450nm, or inherently "red" about a wavelength of 750nm - yet when these wavelengths of light hit our eyes, we experience blue and red colours. Here's some amazing facts about colour vision and your brain (read these two posts about colour perception if you don't know much about it!) Your brain keeps colours constant. A purple wig keeps on looking purple with different kinds of light shining on it (i.e. when you move from inside to outside). Outside light is really blue, but inside light is really yellow - yet the purple wig keeps looking basically the same colour the whole time - even though the actual light being reflected to your eye from the wig has changed vastly in wavelength. And it's all got to do with context - you use the colour of other things in your world to determine what the colour of things should be. This is called colour constancy. Don't believe me? Both of this girl's eyes are the exact same shade of grey. Still don't believe me? This is what happens if you remove everything from the image except for the eyes. (image from here) There are also impossible colours that could never be perceived (though you can try here by crossing your eyes). This includes "bluish yellow" and "greenish red". You can't create them (I'm talking about mixing light here, not paints) - whenever you mix these opponent colours you just get grey. Apparently, you could never perceive these mixes of light. What's different about these colours that makes them different from mixing yellow and green, for instance? Again, this isn't anything unique about the physics of light - these colours are only "impossible" because your brain says so! One more: after images (ignore the seedy music on the video, it's actually really cool.) Your brain makes up colours that don't even exist, just because it was tired of the ones it was looking at. Bloglovin' | Facebook | Twitter |  Instagram | Chictopia | Lookbook | Tumblr