Sal
@Sal@mander.xyz
- Comment on The Inside of Sensirion's SCD4x 4 days ago:
Awesome, thanks! I will look into it.
- Comment on The Inside of Sensirion's SCD4x 4 days ago:
You are welcome! Wanted to do this for some time and writing about it is a way to force myself to think about what I see more carefully.
- Comment on The Inside of Sensirion's SCD4x 4 days ago:
That is very cool! I did not know they were producing in Switzerland. I would like to visit. Do you know if they routinely open to the public?
I wonder if the “magic sauce” is a polyimide. Those polymers are often used as the dielectric layer to make capacitors that are humidity-sensitive. These polymers have sites into which water molecules can reversibly dock such that the occupancy at equilibrium is proportional to the % relative humidity.
- Comment on The Inside of Sensirion's SCD4x 4 days ago:
That is true. To me, the sensor data in itself is of value because I am interested in learning about, for example, whether the CO2 emission changes while the fruiting happens. But it is definitely not necessary for achieving good results. I see it more like a hobby on top of a hobby. Hobby stacking!
- Comment on The Inside of Sensirion's SCD4x 5 days ago:
The CO2 has not proven too valuable because the humidity controller refreshes the air before CO2 builds up. But the humidity sensor is quite handy. I made a simple humidifier and it gets triggered by a raspberry pi over Zigbee when the humidity drops below 85%.
- Comment on The Inside of Sensirion's SCD4x 5 days ago:
Probably not! That was a mistake on my part. The better term would be photoacoustic sensing I believe, so I have edited the post to use that term instead.
Although the response is proportional to the absorbance value at a narrow wavelength range, and CO2 is detected selectively because its molar absorption coefficient is high at that specific wavelength. I think the argument can be made that this is an action spectroscopy method limited to a single point. But I am not quite sure, so ‘photoacoustic sensing’ wins. Thanks!
- Comment on The Inside of Sensirion's SCD4x 5 days ago:
No problem! Happy to share
- Comment on The Inside of Sensirion's SCD4x 5 days ago:
I’m happy to share and glad someone else finds it interesting too :D
I also use SHT41 for other projects. It is a very nice sensor. I made an incubator with PID control and tested multiple different sensors, and the SHT41 was my final choice. Responds very fast and its accuracy is excellent.
In my mushroom chamber I have found out that CO2 is not actually an important control variable because the humidity is what changes the fastest and blowing humid air through the chamber brings the CO2 down anyway. So I would probably be able to get away with the SHT41, but measuring CO2 is just fun.
- Submitted 5 days ago to electronics@discuss.tchncs.de | 17 comments
- Comment on I made a happy spider planter for my spider plant, inspired by this community! 6 days ago:
Very cool! Nice work :D
- Submitted 6 days ago to herpetology@mander.xyz | 2 comments
- Comment on Chat, is this true? 2 months ago:
Looking through the archived history of the talk page, I can confirm that the claim on the wiki page is derived from the viral post, and not the other way around: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…/Archive_3#Chalchiuhtlicue…
- Comment on Chat, is this true? 2 months ago:
How did I miss that?!
My timeline is incorrect then. Since the post from sassymetischick.bsky predates the wiki edit, it is more likely that the wiki edit was made in response to this meme, and not the other way around. This pretty invalidates what I said above…
I still can’t find any evidence of this being an actual trend, but I no longer have a good guess about the origin.
- Comment on Chat, is this true? 2 months ago:
Cuando quieras! 😁
- Comment on Chat, is this true? 2 months ago:
Yes, but that version is in German. That website also has one in English: annas-archive.org/slow_download/…/0
Let’s see…
Woah, interesting. The author is José López Portillo. I thought he shared the name with a former Mexican president, but, nope, the author is a former Mexican president.
The title of the English version is a bit different, but the text appears to be the same. It is a novel, and I can find no mention of the gulf of Mexico or of Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl in this book. To me it looks like a mistake in the citation.
The claim appears to come from this text (citation 1): scribd.com/…/Dioses-prehispanicos-de-Mexico-mitos…
Unfortunately, that book does not contain references nor is it stated where this claim comes from.
- Comment on Chat, is this true? 2 months ago:
Hah, sure, let’s investigate 🕵️♂️
The term ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’ was added as a potential Aztec name to the English wikipedia page on February 15, 2025, by user ‘Mxn’.
The description of the edit is the following:
Frum says the Aztecs had no specific name for the gulf, which is plausible in a practical sense, but Fernández gives a specific religious name and is more of a reliable source on this topic
So, it is clear that the term was identified by user Mxn by performing an active online search.
If we investigate a bit further, we can see that the term Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl is described to be a name for the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ in the spanish Wikipedia: es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl
This page was updated to include the description of Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl as the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ in September 16, 2018. I don’t have access to the citation so I don’t know if the citation specifies if this term is still known/used.
If you check the history you will find that the same ‘Mxn’ fixed a typo in this page on February 15, 2025.
So, from this sequence of events it is highly likely that the term ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’ was included into the Gulf of Mexico wiki page as a result of the user Mxn performing an active search for Aztec names for the Gulf of Mexico.
I can find no evidence of native people referring to the gulf of Mexico as ‘Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl’. I can find no mention of this becoming viral in Mexico.
I find it highly unlikely that:
- User Mxn added an obscure Aztec term to the Wiki page two weeks ago AND
- This same obscure Aztec term coincidentally began being used by Mexican natives, and this trend became popular enough to be noticed by foreign media but not by Mexican media
More likely…
- Mxn actively looked for a term and updated the English wiki
- Someone read the English wiki, thought this would be a nice story, made the meme
And this concludes my little investigation 🧐
- Comment on Cellular Consciousness: Life Does Not End With the Death of the Body. 2 months ago:
Always exciting to learn about new perspectives on consciousness!
I have searched for the “Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC)” theory and I do not personally find it very compelling. I appreciate that the hard problem of consciousness is very difficult to address using the scientific method, but I suspect that consciousness arises from a form of processing that requires computations of the kind performed by animal brains. I don’t think that the kind of biophysics that allows cells to sense and respond to the environment are enough to create a conscious experience.
About the: “third state”. Cells are alive, independently of the multi-cellular organism that they come from. I don’t agree that changing the way that the cells are organized constitutes some “third state”.
Despite my disagreements, it is still nice to read and think about. Thanks for sharing.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Hello!
Yes, the !biology@mander.xyz community is a community for general biology-related content.
There are also more specific communities that focus in more specialized topics, such as such as !palaeontology@mander.xyz.
If you have an interest in a specific topic, feel free to create a community that reflects that interest. Some instances are very general while others try to limit communities to those that fit a range of topics, so it is best to create a community in an instance for which the topic is in scope.
- Comment on Haha SO TRUE! 5 months ago:
Haha So True!
- Comment on UV light in bedroom 5 months ago:
If you don’t mind sharing, please do!
I looked a bit more into it and discovered that some people do use UV lights for inducing stress responses on plants. Most of what I found is from cannabis growing communities that make use of the UV light to increase the potency of the plant. I don’t know how effective that is, but that did signal to me that some shops might sell UV lamps as grow lamps.
An example of a specific lamp I could find is the MIGRO UVB 310. If you follow that link and look through the images you will see that the bulb is clearly labeled with “UV BOOST”.
These lamps are meant to be used as supplemental inputs to stress the plant. It is not very likely that you ended up with such a lamp by mistake as it is still a niche type application. But it is good that you are making sure.
- Comment on UV light in bedroom 5 months ago:
Does the bulb have some model written on it? If you tell us the specific model we may be able to find the properties of that light.
There is a good chance that you do not have a “UV lamp” but one of those purple grow lights, which do not emit a lot of UV. Those plant lights have a spectrum that is tuned to the regions of the spectrum for which green plants absorb the most light - so, the lamp emits mostly in the blue and red, which is why they look purple. There is no need to worry about that light, it is perfectly safe.
If you do have a UV lamp and are using that lamp for a plant: Then we really do need more information to estimate the level of risk. Chances are that, if that UV lamp is harmful to you, it is also harmful to the plant, and it is better to swap it for some other type of lamp.
It is not very likely that you are using a one of the more dangerous UV lights - like a mercury-vapor lamp with a quartz bulb - which will produce smelly ozone and can burn your eyes if you stare at them. Those lamps tend to be specialized items that you are unlikely to end up with by mistake. More common lamps would be the blacklights with common variants that produce 365 nm or 395 nm light. Continuous direct exposure of moderately intense 365 nm carries a low risk inducing skin cancer and is better to avoid. 395 nm is relatively safe but I would still not want to expose my skin continuously to it as it may still cause oxidative stress to the skin. These are used ornamentally for making things glow, but they are not the best choice for plants.
- Comment on (Scottsdale, AZ) Gila Monster or Chuckwalla? 5 months ago:
Very cool!! My opinion is that it is a thin gila monster
- Comment on Verticillium sp. (I think) 5 months ago:
Certainly a fun fact 😄 Reminds me of the painful sandspurs that stick one’s feet while walking through the beach.
- Comment on The common milk frog (Trachycephalus typhonius) 5 months ago:
Good question. The green pigment is biliverdin, which is a product of the breakdown of heme. But more specifically I am not quite sure, I’ll have a look.
I have found this open access article from 2020:Taboada, Carlos, et al. “Multiple origins of green coloration in frogs mediated by a novel biliverdin-binding serpin.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117.31 (2020): 18574-18581.
This article goes into more specificity about the protein that binds the pigment and allows it to become concentrated inside of the body and bones. In this article they suggest that green is a difficult color to make, and that multiple frogs have evolved in parallel this mechanism to sequester the green biliverdin within the body, develop a translucent skin, and become green this way (for camouflage).
However, the common milk frog is not very green. It could be that the biliverdin-binding protein is a trait that is derived from an ancestor and is now vestigial. In the cited article, near the end, they do include a section “Other BBSs Functions”. In this section they point out that some frogs with green bones do not look green, and suggest that the protein could be involved in inflammation pathways and behave as an anti-oxidant. But nothing conclusive.
I quickly skimmed for other recent papers but I can’t find anything conclusive.
- Comment on STOP. IDING. PLANTS. 5 months ago:
Careful. Big Taxonomy doesn’t mess around.
- Comment on Verticillium sp. (I think) 5 months ago:
Hey, thanks a lot! I agree with your assessment.
I spent some time looking through pictures and these Verticillium photos were the best matches I could find:
researchgate.net/…/Conidiophore-bearing-conidia-h…
…slidesharecdn.com/…/Tomato-verticillium-wilt-8-3…
But that Acremonium certainly looks like an even better match. And you are completely right in pointing out that the arrangement seen in my image is irregular whereas the Verticillium images show a more regular symmetric relationship between the condiogenous cells (term of the day for me).
- Comment on The common milk frog (Trachycephalus typhonius) 5 months ago:
We are a thriving amphibian community
- Submitted 5 months ago to mycology@mander.xyz | 4 comments
- Submitted 5 months ago to herpetology@mander.xyz | 6 comments
- Comment on I feel like laying an egg. 6 months ago:
Hahahahaha
