This is my scientific history in a series of short acronyms.
I know the author is thinking of recent events in space technology, but it’s also applicable to biology. I’ve had embryos undergo “rapid unscheduled disassembly”.
Although, actually, I’ve never felt a need to resort to euphemisms. “The experiment failed” is usually good enough.
“Advance to the rear” was a childhood favorite.
Wait, really? Like literally break apart messily fast explosion style? Spiders? How?
Did not know they were full of some equivalent to rocket fuel.. insect and arachnid juices, sure but not, well, that.
Zebrafish embryos are full of yolk, surrounded by a fragile membrane. Grasshopper embryos are actually strongly pressurized – they will literally pop when you poke into them. Spider embryos are also very yolky.
Basically, embryos do not respond well to any damage to the external membranes.
@ ^ Okay. Something new learnt tonight / this very early now morning.. Wow!
I dunno, was picking a little bit on the plumbers working in the apartment laundry room. There was a wee bit of RUD in a drain pipe, undermined some flooring and well, an old guy was building a boat and animals were starting to get on.
So, they’re busily jackhammering out the floor to get at the main standpipe. I don’t envy them that job, did it before and just wasn’t any fun.
Especially with old work, fix one leak, find a replacement leak happily being issued for a couple of meters down…
Hmmm, so grasshopper embryos are strongly pressurized? I’ll hazard a guess that they’d fare poorly in space… Unlike squishy critters like mammals.
Seriously though, why the pressurization? Growth rate?
Marcus Ranum @ 1, that’d be a rapid retrograde movement/advance. Typically, in a motor vehicle, that movement is controlled by a shifter position indicated with a great big “R”. Because, retreat is discouraged.
Yeah, got a million of ’em. None are any good, but quantity has a quality all of it’s own.
Or something.
In the 1950’s, when automatic transmissions were fairly new, the nasty joke was to tell someone as they were driving, ‘if you want to go fast, shift it into ‘R’ for race.’ An energetic halting of locomotion was the immediate result.
My understanding (gained in another forum, not from personal experience) is that “RUD” is a longstanding term in the aerospace community. It sounds like obfuscation, but it avoids making unwarranted assumptions: whether it had a fuel issue that meant it exploded and then became a twisted hulk or had an aerodynamic failure that meant it became a twisted hulk that then exploded is an important distinction when you are doing root cause analysis and figuring out how to avoid it next time.
I don’t think “the experiment failed” adequately covers ICE or CPM situations… And if those are part of your scientific history, I’d say you have some stories I’d like to hear!
Failed Under Continuous Testing
Spider: That wasn’t “unscheduled”! That was my lunch!