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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
kenobi-wan-obi CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
Dino-DNA Art Honors the 20th Anniversary of ‘Jurassic Park’ Today
“DINO-DNA: A tribute to Jurassic Park” is an online art tribute to Michael Crichton’s novel and Steven Spielberg’s movie masterpiece, which premiered 20 years ago on this date in 1993. The show is curated & presented by Chogrin (Facebook.com/chogrinart), who’s love for Jurassic Park was born in a movie theater back in 1993.
All of the art above (and on the Dino-DNA blog) can be purchased through the Dino-DNA exhibit site where you’ll find artist information and e-mail addresses to contact them and purchase a print.
(via FirstShowing)
kenobi-wan-obi
During the Jurassic period, between about 200 million and 145 million years ago, some meat-eating dinosaurs began evolving birdlike skeletons and sprouting feathers on their bodies.
One group of these creatures eventually split off to become birds, although researchers have long debated which one it was and when it actually happened. Now, a team of scientists claims to have found the earliest known bird, a discovery that could finally put these questions to rest.
But critics question whether it really is a bird, and some are not entirely convinced that it’s an authentic specimen…
Continue to WiredScience: Earliest Bird Claim Ruffles Feathers
Yellowstone National Park’s Prismatic Pool
The photo above shows the brightly colored Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. The red and yellow colors of the pool in the foreground contrast sharply with the azure blue color in the mid-ground and with the greens and tans of the slope in the background.
Red and yellow colors are caused by pigmented bacteria and thermophiles (heat-loving algae) inhabiting the hot spring. Specific colors of the thermophiles correspond to a particular temperature range of the naturally heated springs – temperatures are 160 F (70 C) at the spring’s source.
Colors are also a result of the ratio of chlorophyll to carotenoids – red/orange is observed during summer but typically, dark green is favored during the colder months. The inset photo shows a close up of a thermophile colony.
Making art from stripped-down dead animals
“SOMETIMES I go to pet shops and ask whether I can receive dead creatures.”
And then 29-year-old Iori Tomita, from Yokohama, Japan, does incredible things to them. Taking up to a year, he gently rinses the animals with enzymes that break down soft tissue and protein. What is left is what he calls the transparent specimen: cartilage, which he dyes blue, and bone, dyed purple. “People are attracted by the beauty of creatures,” he says. “Formalin specimens look grotesque.”
Most of the material that Tomita uses in his art comes from fishermen – he used to be one until he was 25 – discarded dead crabs, squid, unsold deep-sea fish, unwanted tiddlers. And then there are the macabre packages from pet shops. Tomita still fishes, but his life changed when he visited an art gallery for the first time two years ago and realised that he could fuse his love of nature with what was regarded as art.
There is a moral dimension to the work, too. He quotes a UN Food and Agriculture Organization report showing that a third of all food produced for human consumption each year is wasted. “Do you think about how many lives that is?” he asks.
Tomita – who says he has thought about but rejected the idea of making transparent artworks of dead humans – sells prints and, in Japan, bottled specimens of stripped-down animals.
(Images: Iori Tomita/2013 New World Transparent Specimens)
neuromorphogenesis
The connectivity of fiber tracks in alumnus Chris Gaiteri’s brain based on an imaging technique he created - a self-portrait of sorts.
Art in Science on Display at W&L’s Kamen Gallery (Washington and Lee University).
In September 2012, hundreds of amateur and professional photographers had the rare opportunity to explore and photograph accelerators and detectors at particle physics laboratories around the world.
The top 39 photographs from the Photowalk, including the six winners of the jury and “people’s choice” competitions, are now viewable online.
“The worldwide opening of the physics laboratories for the Photowalk has been an excellent opportunity for showing the real places of physics research,” says Antonio Zoccoli, a member of the executive board at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics. “The Photowalk tells us that scientific research is a global enterprise, which brings together intelligence, resources and technologies from different countries toward a common goal.
“Photowalk winners show modern beauty of science”
Photos viewable here [x]
abluegirlIntriguing Science Art From the University of Wisconsin
“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.”
—Jules Henri Poincare, a French mathematician (1854-1912)
The University of Wisconsin-Madison revealed the winners of the 2012 Cool Science image contest at the beginning of the month. From clusters of cells, zebrafish neural networks to ZnO Fall Flowers as seen above, this year’s contest showed nothing but impressive content for us to enjoy. Check out the rest of the contestants here!
Empathy, Art & Entertainment
At his Google talk (“The Neuroscience of Empathy”), UCSF’s Dr. Thomas Lewis answers the question:
Are depictions of destruction and pain in art designed to blunt our sense of empathy?:
“If art works, it makes you feel something and often, say in a novel in which you identify with the characters, if something bad happens to them it is somewhat painful for you. So I think good art evokes [empathy]. I think entertainment blunts it. So, say if you see a mass market entertainment film…I just saw the Bruce Willis film —not to say it’s bad, which it’s not, but— Bruce Willis is tossed about like a rag doll throughout the course of the film. Nothing bad happens to him. He doesn’t break any bones. He doesn’t suffer visibly at any point. That, I think, does blunt our empathy: entertainment. But art shouldn’t do that. And actually it is one of the fundamental distinctions between art and entertainment that’s worth describing.”
[image via sandandglass]
(via ucresearch)
ucresearchTesla Orchestra plays Zelda theme song
“Taking something where there’s chords and multiple melodies, you’ve got to pick and choose which ones you use for the coils,” Lewis said. “We pick out the main melody and usually the bass line or harmony line from the existing track and plug them into a standard MIDI track and send that information to the coils and then play the backing track along with it.”
The coils themselves were built by the Tesla Orchestra, which hails from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The machines are designed to emit bolts of electricity that match the notes on a keyboard. - Wired.com
Ronald Fischer, Beekeeper by Richard Avedon, 1981.
To get the bees to land on Fischer, photographer Richard Avedon enlisted the help of UC Davis entomologist (and professional bee wrangler) Dr. Norman Gary, who smeared the beekeeper with queen bee pheromone and a dash of plant extract similar to peppermint — a method he devised himself.
Norman Gary, a professor emeritus, also has quite the impressive imdb page — with bee wrangling credits ranging from My Girl to The X-Files.
Heart-Shaped Glomerocryst Photomicrograph
While studying samples of lavas from the Aeolian Islands off the west coast of Italy, I came across an interesting aggregate of crystals (glomerocryst).
A photomicrograph thin section of the aggregate is featured above. Aeolian lava is studied to understand how magma forms at depth and the level of risk of its eruption. This particular glomerocryst is made of two minerals; plagioclase and pyroxene, whose chemical compositions, textures and melt inclusions help decipher just what happens in a magma chamber.
But, if you look closely at its shape, you might learn something more — that even something as hard as a rock has a heart. — Bernardo Cesare
Colors in Pond Ice Using a Polarizer Lens
The photo above showing meltwater on ice, imaged using a circular polarizer lens, was taken on a pond near Rimavska Sobota, Slovakia.
The refractive index of ice crystals depends upon the polarization and propagation direction of a beam of light. This property is known as birefringence (sometimes called double refraction). The colored light seen when looking through the sides of an airplane window is an example of birefringence. When a beam of light propagates through ice crystals, two distinct rays result, depending upon the direction of propagation.
A polarizer filter or lens acts to recombine the rays. However, due to the fact that these rays were out of phase when recombined, the new polarized rays are composed of various wavelengths of visible light, which as shown here result in especially vibrant colors. Note that colors in pond ice may also be due to interference in narrow fissures and from refraction by trapped air bubbles. — Photography: Daniela Rapava Summary: Jim Foster & Daniela Rapava
