At the Mission Bay campus of UCSF, a beautiful courtyard is speckled with fake -80°C freezers, which protrude from the ground like exhumed coffins. It's a wry joke.
Most of the research there involves biology, and those freezers are a common sight in life science labs. So, even when students go outside – to get away from their work – they can't. The beige rectangles are always there, haunting them.
Rather than teasing their employees, some institutions are adorned with amazing works of art. Perhaps the best is a series of sculptures called Waltz of the Polypeptides, which was crafted by Mara Haseltine for Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
It shows ribosomes, the part of cells that make proteins, assembling a substance, called BLyS, which sends signals to the immune system. This is a photo of the completed molecule.
Refrigerator Photo: Aaron Rowe, BLyS Peptide: Vik Nanda / flickr
If there is a fantastic sculpture on your campus, please tell us about it or post a link in the comments thread.
