14 comments

  • staplung 20 minutes ago
    If you have a decent microscope and want to work on some citizen science that's directly related to the research in this article: https://www.vanettenlab.org/paulinella-consortium
  • ouked 2 hours ago
  • GTP 1 hour ago
    I have an idea on how life could originate in a motel room :D
  • Beijinger 46 minutes ago
  • tpict 1 hour ago
    I wonder what the author thinks steampunk means
    • dekhn 1 hour ago
      Right- that's really just a version of a worm pick. I use similar tools (including a mouth pipette... remember kids, in chemistry: don't pipette by mouth, in biology: oops I think I just inhaled something!) working with tardigrade. If it was steampunk there would be some sort of goggles, leather, gears, and a tincture of laudunum.
  • alpineman 1 hour ago
    All they needed was a blue UV light
  • danso 2 hours ago
    • Barbing 54 minutes ago
      Thank you! (Also, haven’t seen this kind of gift link that has the little login requirement, suppose they’re looking to strike a better balance.)
    • lokeshramchand 46 minutes ago
      Thank you!
  • oofbey 1 hour ago
    Why did they work in a motel room? The article kinda implies it had something to do with Trump’s funding cuts, but unless I missed something the connection wasn’t made explicit.
    • dekhn 1 hour ago
      I think it's mainly to be close to the sample collection area while also having a place to do microscopy in semi-privacy. Looking at their equipment, I think they bought everything out of pocket and pay for the hotel on their own.
  • m3kw9 2 hours ago
    I thought they use built up gunk from years in the bathroom to discover new species, so they choose a cheap motel.
  • sevenart 2 hours ago
    non-paywall (perm): https://archive.ph/QpBF1
  • kstrauser 2 hours ago
    Super cool, and I bet housekeeping loved tidying up after turning a motel room into a street biology lab. Honestly, I think I’d prefer to stay in a room previously used to cook meth.
    • _qua 2 hours ago
      You think pond water is the worst thing an $80 motel room has seen?
      • kstrauser 2 hours ago
        > Jugs of brackish water lined the walls. Buckets overflowed with hunks of marsh grass.

        I don’t know, that goes a little above and beyond IMO. One typically doesn’t do science in a house-type setting, for many of the same reasons you don’t carpet a bathroom.

        • Brybry 2 hours ago
          Probably poetic license. You can look at the pictures and see everything looks very clean.

          The jugs are sealed. We can't see any "overflowing" buckets. Looking at some water samples under a microscope is not really that messy.

        • subscribed 2 hours ago
          > for many of the same reasons you don’t carpet a bathroom

          For some reason this is a commonplace in the UK.

          Yeah....

          • stephbook 1 hour ago
            I had a colleague who walked the tiled floor in front of pissoirs in socks..
            • subscribed 1 hour ago
              Ugh, I just realised my imagination is too good :)
        • pengaru 1 hour ago
          > for many of the same reasons you don’t carpet a bathroom.

          someone should inform the orange POTUS of this: https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/did-donald-trump-j...

  • codedokode 34 minutes ago
    So $80 is considered a "cheap room"? How is a person supposed to earn $80 a day to pay for it and have something left?

    Also, cells can have scales? Amazing.

    • onlyrealcuzzo 28 minutes ago
      It takes ~30 minutes to turn around a nightly hotel room, front desk check-in and other labor can easily make that >1h of labor per room per day.

      Even in the budget industry, your nightly utility usage comes close to $10, consumables are $3+.

      Hotel stays are typically taxed higher than typical sales tax.

      Once you add that in, real estate taxes, and any corporate taxes - you're getting close to the $50 price point...

      That's before you factor in the cost of maintaining the building, or the financing to buy the building itself (or any profit).

    • 650REDHAIR 30 minutes ago
      $80/day is a cheap room in most of the US and Canada.

      My standards for hotel rooms on road trips are quite low and I will call the crappy motels to avoid the bloated .com booking rates and it’s not very often I find even 1 star hotels under $80/day after taxes.

    • mkirsten 30 minutes ago
      Have you stayed at hotels? Most people that work don’t stay at hotels and pay the hotel out of pocket.
      • codedokode 9 minutes ago
        I am not from US and with that money I could rent a tiny apartment for 2-3 days. However, I prefer cheaper accomodation. $80 is super expensive if you have no other place to live.