#pilea

Biological structures aren't 3D printed like some folks may imagine, but are "seeded" or nucleated instead and use a set of rules that end up generating the whole structure with relatively little information compared to needing a whole 3D model to be stored. (Think of an ice crystal forming, allowing other molecules to attach to with, with the shape of that initial crystal informing the rest of the structure)

The pattern was discovered when Elijah Blum, then a high school intern at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, noticed the Pilea’s fascinating leaves while plant-sitting for his sister. The leaves were speckled with water-venting pores called hydathodes, each fenced in by veins to form a mosaic. Blum, now at New York University, took the plant to his supervisor, computer scientist Saket Navlakha. “He showed the plant to me, and he said, ‘Look, the veins look kind of interesting here,’” Navlakha says. “And we sort of held it up to the light, and we saw that canonical Voronoi diagram.” In a Voronoi diagram, a surface is divided around a set of points so that every spot in a zone is closer to that zone’s point than any other. Urban planners use the same idea to map services such as fire departments, assigning houses to the nearest station. (Read more)

our dogs, the best dogs💗

my pilea that randomly decided to bloom

sunrise omw to work

book I need to start reading for book club

bouquets I made ☺️

a lil friend I rescued from the sidewalk