Yeah, the pump is in the black can, he filled it carefully in step 2, so that the intake vent (which is placed high up) was covered and the pump could start the cycle.
Ah cell medium, a very fraught subject in biology. Two quick points that were not covered, or not covered very well in the article. First, the red color comes from a chemical, phenol red, that is used to monitor pH. If the solution gets too acidic it turns yellow, too basic and it turns purple. Although phenol red has been used forever, it is a slight estrogen mimic, which can alter how the cells work, especially if you are looking at estrogen receptors, but you can get EMEM and DMEM without phenol red.
Second, the article dosen't really talk about another important part of cell media, FBS or fetal bovine serum. This is added to the cell growth media to provide important hormones (like insulin) and other growth factors (which aren't completely understood) to the cells. This is an animal product which varies from batch to batch, and you can see how this causes issues in repeat-ability, as well as not being a human product for studying human cells.
For example... the photo that is shown for the top of the post is a classic "drop-jaw" smile, where the draw is dropped and the teeth are apart. This is a "false smile" used for social positioning. Like I said, Aggressive, hierarchical, and lying.
We smile a lot because we are culture that is aggressive, hierarchical, and lies. We rarely perform Duchenne smiles to outsiders (where the eyes crinkle, an honest sign of happiness), but instead we use the primate fear smile, which is used to fend off aggressiveness.
Another deeper question I have, and one that is not talked about in the article, except in the comments, is did they look for cheating? Michelle Rhee, a darling of the charter school system looked great until evidence of institutional cheating surfaced which were inflating grades.
How do we really know that we are not instead promoting people who are willing to cheat, rather than those who actually teach better?
Second, the article dosen't really talk about another important part of cell media, FBS or fetal bovine serum. This is added to the cell growth media to provide important hormones (like insulin) and other growth factors (which aren't completely understood) to the cells. This is an animal product which varies from batch to batch, and you can see how this causes issues in repeat-ability, as well as not being a human product for studying human cells.
How do we really know that we are not instead promoting people who are willing to cheat, rather than those who actually teach better?
THE HORRORS!!!!!