word of the day: mujerón

The word of the day is mujerón:


A stout woman; a matron.  (spanishdict.com)

"On the T, you swear you see your ex in the rush-hour mix and for a second your knees buckle, but it turns out to be just another Latina mujerón in a tailored suit."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: whip

The word of the day is whip:

When the steering wheel was first put into use in automobiles, it was called the "whip". The whip is what you used to control the horses on a stagecoach, hence the analogy. Many years later, various hip hop artists noticed that the Mercedes-Benz logo resembled a steering wheel. They then proceeded to use the old term "whip" to describe any Mercedes-Benz vehicle. The term has now been generalized to classify any expensive automobile.  (Urban Dictionary)

"You get pulled over by the cops three weekends in a row.  One time, they sit you out on the curb and you watch as all the other whips sail past, passengers ogling you as they go."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: stenosis

The word of the day is stenosis:

< Greek στένωσις narrowing, < στενοῦν to narrow, < στενός narrow.(Show Less)

Pathol.

The contraction or stricture of a passage, duct or canal.  (OED)

"The numbness in your arms and legs increases.  You return to your doctors and they send you over to a neurologist, who sends you out for an MRI.  Looks like you have stenosis all down your spine, the doctor reports, impressed."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: lapidary

The word of the day is lapidary:

< Latin lapidārius, < lapid-, lapis stone.

 A. adj. 

1. Concerned with stones. rare. 

2.a. Of an inscription, etc.: Engraved on stone, esp. monumental stones. 

b. Of style, etc.: Characteristic of or suitable for monumental inscriptions.(OED)

"The boy is staring at you with lapidary intensity."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: carajito

The word of the day is carajito:

Kid, small child. (Latin American) (spanishdict.com)

"Elvis, Jr., watches you with considerable gravitas.  He is a piercingly cute carajito."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: pica pollo

The word of the day is pica pollo:

Deep fried chicken. (Dominicancooking.com)

"You invite them all to sit down, order more beer and some bad pica pollo."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: prima

The word of the day is prima:

Female cousin. (spanishdict.com)

"Of course they all have a sister or a prima they want you to meet."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: colmado

The word of the day is colmado:

grocer's (shop). (spanishdict.com)

"Takes him less than five seconds to talk you into ordering a couple of grandes and a bottle of Brugal from the nearby colmado."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: negocio

The word of the day is negocio:

business. (spanishdict.com)

"The happy couple leave you with the family and Elvis, Jr., while they visit various negocios to settle accounts and to pick up some necessities."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: hijo

The word of the day is hijo:

son. (spanishdict.com)

"Elvis picks up the boy.  Mi hijo, he sings.  Mi hijo."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: campesina

The word of the day is campesina:

rural, country (del campo); peasant (en el pasado, en países pobres). (spanishdict.com)

"So the padrino finally decides to visit, she declaims in one of those loud ronca campesina voices."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: ronca

The word of the day is ronca:

Hoarse (persona), husky, having a rough voice. (spanishdict.com)

"So the padrino finally decides to visit, she declaims in one of those loud ronca campesina voices."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: padrino

The word of the day is padrino:

1. godfather (de bautismo); best man (de boda)

• padrinos -> godparents (padrino y madrina)

2. second (en duelos, torneos)

3. patron (protector) (spanishdict.com)

"So the padrino finally decides to visit, she declaims in one of those loud ronca campesina voices."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: abrazo

The word of the day is abrazo:

embrace, hug (spanishdict.com)

"She is no older than twenty-one, twenty-two, with an irresistible Georgina Duluc smile, and when she sees you she gives you a huge abrazo."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: motoconcho

The word of the day is motoconcho:

A small motorccycle, usually about a 110cc, used for cheap taxi service, in the Dominican Republic. It is not unusual to see one with up to five or six people one, all at the same time. They are also sometimes used instead of a pickup truck, etc., for moving large items, such as washing machines. (Urban Dictionary)

"You have to leave the rental jípeta on the last bit of paved road and jump on the back of two motoconchos with all the luggage balanced on your backs.  Nobody stares, because those ain't real loads you're carrying: You've seen a single moto carry a family of five and their pig."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

Word of the day: jípeta

The word of the day is jípeta:

A "jipeta" is the equivalent to an SUV (Ford Explorer, Lincoln Navigator, Toyota Landcruiser) in the Dominican Republic. (wordreference.com)

"You have to leave the rental jípeta on the last bit of paved road and jump on the back of two motoconchos with all the luggage balanced on your backs."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: chawl

The word of the day is chawl:

< Marathi chāl a row of rooms let for lodgings, < Sanskrit shālā house, hall.

An Indian lodging-house. (OED)

"You've been to the Nadalands a couple of times before; shit, your family came up out of those spaces.  Squatter chawls where there are no roads, no lights, no running water, no grid, no anything, where everybody's slapdash house is on top of everybody else's, where it's all mud and shanties and motos and grind and thin, smiling motherfuckers everywhere, like falling of the rim of civilization."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: kalbi

The word of the day is kalbi:


Korean ribs (Food Network)


"Afterward, you head out alone to a Korean joint and gorge on kalbi until you're ready to burst."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: morena

The word of the day is morena:

	adjective 1. Brown, inclining to black. 2. Swarthy (persona). 3. Tanned (bronceado). 4. Mulatto. (Caribbean)

"You finally start work on your eighties apocalypse novel - finally starting means you write a paragraph - and in a flush of confidence you begin messing with this young morena from Harvard Law School whom you meet at the Enormous Room."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: cursi

The word of the day is cursi:

adjective 1. tacky (vestido, canción), naff (British); affected (modales, persona) masculine or feminine noun 2. affected person (modales, persona) (spanishdict.com)

"You consider flopping in front of her - My leg! My leg! - but that seems incredibly cursi."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

molecule of the day: deoxypyridoxine

The molecule of the day is deoxypyridoxine:

It's a vitamin B6 antagonist, so my guess is that it inhibits sphingosine-1-phosphate lyase, because it uses pyridoxal

 
 as a cofactor, and I think that's why this paper includes it in their sphingosine kinase assay mix.  I think.

word of the day: cuerpazo

The word of the day is cuerpazo:

	Derived from the Spanish, it means a banging body. (Urban Dictionary)

"By winter's end, you've gotten to know all the morning regulars and there's even this one girl who inspires in you some hope.  You pass each other a couple of times a week, and she's a pleasure to watch, a gazelle, really - what economy, what gait, and what an amazing fucking cuerpazo."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: bachatero

The word of the day is bachatero:

bachatero [bah-chah-tay’-ro]

noun

1. Reveller, carouser. (Caribbean) (m)

(spanishdict.com)

"You start three novels: one about a pelotero, one about a narco, and one about a bachatero - all of them suck pipe."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: pelotero

The word of the day is pelotero:

pelotero [pay-lo-tay'-ro]

noun

1. Ball-maker. (m)

2. Ball player, sportsman, footballer, baseball player. (Ante Meridian & Latin American) (m) (spanishdict.com)

"You start three novels: one about a pelotero, one about a narco, and one about a bachatero - all of them suck pipe."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: puto

The word of the day is puto:

spanish word for a male prostitute. sometimes it´s offesive for homosexuals. in mexico it is used for cowards and traitors.  (Urban Dictionary)

"One of the ex-sucias publishes a poem about you online.  It's called 'Puto'."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: pernil

The word of the day is pernil:



pernil [per-neel']

noun

1. Ham, shoulder of an animal, especially of pork. (m)

2. Thigh of breeches; pantalets. (m)

"Thanksgiving you end up having to spend alone in your apartment because you can't face your mom and the idea of accepting other people's charity makes you furious.  The ex, as you're now calling her, always cooked: a turkey, a chicken, a pernil."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

Self-promotion

Vote for your favorite two minute thesis clip! (Of course, I hope you'll vote for mine.)

At the very least, if you've been wondering, "what is it that she's been spending all these years doing?", now's your chance to hear it in two minutes.

word of the day: blanquita

The word of the day is blanquita:



A white girl of any ethnic background whether it be a white girl of Latin American origin or not. (Urban Dictionary)





"Maybe if you'd been engaged to a super-open-minded blanquita you could have survived it - but you're not engaged to a super-open-minded blanquita."

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: cuero

The word of the day is cuero:

 

Noun

cuero m (plural cueros)

1. leather
2. animal skin, hide
3. (Dominican Republic, slang) prostitute (Wiktionary (no, I'm not proud of it, but it's the only place I found anything with remotely the right connotation))

"Your girl catches you cheating.  (Well, actually she's your fiancée, but in a bit it so won't matter.)  She could have caught you with one sucia, she could have caught you with two, but because you're a totally batshit cuero who never empties his e-mail trash can, she caught you with fifty!"

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

word of the day: sucia

The word of the day is sucia:

adjective

1. Dirty, nasty, filthy (mugriento).

2. Stained with sin, tainted with guilt and imperfections.

3. Obscene (palabra), unchaste, smutty.

4. Uncivil, unpolished.

5. Foul; applied to a ship’s bottom, to the sky or weather; to rowing out of rhythm; and to a rocky shore, or a bottom where there are reefs. (Nautical)  (spanishdict.com)

"Your girl catches you cheating.  (Well, actually she's your fiancée, but in a bit it so won't matter.)  She could have caught you with one sucia, she could have caught you with two, but because you're a totally batshit cuero who never empties his e-mail trash can, she caught you with fifty!"

 - Junot Díaz, "The Cheater's Guide to Love", New Yorker 23 July 2012

molecule of the day: quercetin

The molecule of the day is quercetin:

(PubChem)

It's an antioxidant.  It also apparently inhibits at least some diacylglycerol kinases.  The authors don't really discuss why they thought quercetin might inhibit their enzyme, but it's in the same section as the nucleotide analogs: maybe the flat fused rings targets the nucleotide binding site?

word of the day: electrostriction

The word of the day is electrostriction:

n. chiefly Physics change in the volume or shape of a substance, esp. a dielectric, resulting from the application of an electric field. (OED)


"With these approximations the following equation was derived... where Vi is the partial molal volume of the apolar part of the monomer, (Vs-vs) equals the electrostriction of the electrolyte in solution and beta0 is the compressibility of water at temperature T."

 - Tausk et al., "Physical chemical studies of short-chain lecithin homologues.  I.  Influence of the chain length of the fatty acid ester and of electrolytes on the critical micelle concentration", Biophysical Chemistry 1:175 (1973)

molecule of the day: iodoacetate

The molecule of the day is iodoacetate:

(PubChem)

It's a sulfhydryl reagent, which means it reacts with sulfhydryl groups, in proteins, for example, as in this paper.

word of the day: coacervate

The word of the day is coecervate:

Etymology:  Backformation < coacervation n.

Chem.

An aggregate forming viscous drops in a colloidal solution.  

1929   De Jong & Kruyt in Proc. Konink. Akad. van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam XXXII. 853   The coacervate is a drop or a layer, in which the particles have flocked together as bees in a swarm. (OED)

"At concentrations slightly above the critical micelle concentration a phase separation occurs by formation of a coacervate (in the erminology of Bungenberg de Jon: a unicomplexcoacervate)."

 - Tausk et al., "Physical chemical studies of short-chain lecithin homologues.  I.  Influence of the chain length of the fatty acid ester and of electrolytes on the critical micelle concentration", Biophysical Chemistry 1:175 (1973)

molecule of the day: dithionitrobenzoic acid

The molecule of the day is dithionitrobenzoic acid (DTNB):

(PubChem)

It's a sulfhydryl reagent, which means it reacts with sulfhydryl groups, in proteins, for example, as in this paper.

word of the day: cochleate

The word of the day is cochleate:

Etymology:  < Latin coc(h)leāt-us screw-formed, spiral, < coc(h)lea.

Formed like a spiral shell; twisted, spiral. (OED)

"It has been shown previously that calcium induces massive aggregation of sonicated phosphatidylserine vesicles, release of vesicle contents, and formation of large cochleate structures."

 - Wilschut et al., "Studies on the Mechanism of Membrane Fusion: Kinetics of Calcium Ion Induced Fusion of Phsophatidylserine Vesicles Followed by a New Assay for Mixing of Aqueous Vesicle Contents", Biochemistry 19:6011 (1980)

molecule of the day: N-ethylmaleimide

The molecule of the day is N-ethylmaleimide (NEM):

(PubChem)

It's a sulfhydryl reagent, which means it reacts with sulfhydryl groups, in proteins, for example, as in this paper.