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Posts Tagged ‘science’

Three Blind Rats

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 30, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Douglas Quenqua recently wrote in the NY Times about a study with rats that could someday lead to aids for the blind.

“Blind rats with a sensor and compass attached to their brains were able to navigate a maze as successfully as sighted rats, researchers found.

“Researchers at the University of Tokyo wanted to test whether a mammal could use allocentric sense — the awareness of one’s body relative to its environment — to replace vision. The scientists attached a geomagnetic sensor and digital compass to the visual cortices of rats with their eyes sewn shut.

“When the rats moved their heads, the sensors generated electrical impulses to tell them which direction they were facing. The rats were then trained to find pellets in various mazes.

“Within a few days, the blind rats were able to navigate the mazes as well as rats that could see. The two groups of rodents relied on similar navigation strategies. The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, could help lead to devices that help blind people independently navigate their surroundings.

“ ‘The most plausible application is to attach a geomagnetic sensor to a cane so that the blind can know the direction via tactile signals such as vibration,’ Yuji Ikegaya, a pharmacologist and co-author of the study, wrote in an email.” More here.

I couldn’t find a picture of three rats together although there were lots of drawings of three blind mice. I started thinking, Do children even know nursery rhymes anymore? I wonder what they would make of Jack, for example, who fell down “and broke his crown” and “went to bed to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper.” I know a couple kids who would have a lot of questions about that medical treatment.

Perhaps we should make a concerted effort to teach these rhymes before they are lost completely. After all, they are part of our culture, one of our many cultures.

Photo: redorbit

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The Beauty of Micro Marine Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 2, 2015| 1 Comment »

Over at TreeHugger, Kimberley Mok has a post on an Italian filmmaker’s study of breathtakingly beautiful marine life.

“The ocean is a mysterious place,” she writes, “full of wondrous creatures and hidden delights, waiting to be discovered. The very nature of this massive body of fluid is primordial and seen as a symbol of the subconscious in many cultures. Italian filmmaker Sandro Bocci, also known as Bolidesottomarino, recently released a sneak peak at a ‘non-verbal’ film he’s working on, titled ‘Porgrave.’ Showing captivating scenes of vibrantly coloured underwater organisms, it’s a close-up look at a ‘microworld’ that many of us never get to see — or may never get to see, if ocean acidification, pollution and habitat loss continues at today’s alarming rate.

“According to Bocci’s website, Julia Set Collection, the film is influenced by thinkers like Alan Moore, Jan Hanlo, Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, Alfred Van Vogt, and is

an experimental film orbiting scientific and philosophical reflections on time and space, and that through various shooting techniques, fields of magnification, and an exciting soundtrack, weaves a web between science and magic.”

Please click here. The photos are extraordinary.

Photo: Sandro Bocci

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You Are Stardust

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2015| 2 Comments »

I read Maria Popova’s review of this children’s book on the universe a while ago and have been thinking about it ever since.

She writes, “There’s something at once incredibly empowering and incredibly humbling in knowing that the flame in your fireplace came from the sun.

“That’s precisely the kind of cosmic awe environmental writer Elin Kelsey and Toronto-based Korean artist Soyeon Kim seek to inspire in kids in You Are Stardust (public library) — an exquisite picture-book that instills that profound sense of connection with the natural world. Underpinning the narrative is a bold sense of optimism …

“Kim’s breathtaking dioramas … mix tactile physical materials with fine drawing techniques and digital compositing to illuminate the relentlessly wondrous realities of our intertwined existence: The water in your sink once quenched the thirst of dinosaurs; with every sneeze, wind blasts out of your nose faster than a cheetah’s sprint; the electricity that powers every thought in your brain is stronger than lightning.

“But rather than dry science trivia, the message is carried on the wings of poetic admiration for these intricate relationships:

“Be still. Listen.
“Like you, the earth breathes.” More here.

Popova adds these thoughts from particle physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss:

Atoms come in different types called elements. Hydrogen, oxygen and carbon are three of the most important elements in your body. … How did those elements get into our bodies? The only way they could have got there, to make up all the material on our Earth, is if some of those stars exploded a long time ago, spewing all the elements from their cores into space. … So, most of the atoms that now make up your body were created inside stars! The atoms in your left hand might have come from a different star from those in your right hand. You are really a child of the stars.

Art: Soyeon Kim
From the children’s book You Are Stardust

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Interspecies Friends

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 17, 2015| Leave a Comment »

The New York Times Science section had a cute piece in January about surprising friendships among different species of animals. Perhaps you saw it.

Erica Goode reported, “Videos of unlikely animal pairs romping or snuggling have become so common that they are piquing the interest of some scientists, who say they invite more systematic study. Among other things, researchers say, the alliances could add to an understanding of how species communicate, what propels certain animals to connect across species lines and the degree to which some animals can adopt the behaviors of other species.

” ‘There’s no question that studying these relationships can give you some insight into the factors that go into normal relationships,’ said Gordon Burghardt, a professor in the departments of psychology and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, who added that one video he liked to show students was of a small and persistent tortoise tussling over a ball with a Jack Russell terrier. …

“Until recently, any suggestion that interspecies relationships might be based simply on companionship would probably have been met with derision, dismissed as Pixar-like anthropomorphism. That has changed as research has gradually eroded some boundaries between homo sapiens and other animals. Other species, it turns out, share abilities once considered exclusive to humans, including some emotions, tool use, counting, certain aspects of language and even a moral sense. …

“Barbara J. King, an anthropologist at the College of William and Mary, said that she hoped researchers would begin to collect examples of cross-species interactions to build a database that would merit scientific scrutiny. ‘I think we’re not even at the point of being able to extract patterns because the database is so small,’ she said, adding that the topic could also benefit from a rigorous definition of what constitutes a ‘friendship’ between members of different species.” More here.

Photo: Noah’s Ark Animal Sanctuary by way of Africa Geographic.

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Fiction and Empathy

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 31, 2014| Leave a Comment »

As an icebreaker at lunch Monday, a colleague asked us all to go around the table and name a New Year’s resolution. I said I was going to emulate the phone-reading guy in the comic who tells his friend, “Yes, I just got a text, but I think there’s also a subtext.”

I meant that I want to go beneath the surface of things, to listen to what people are really saying. You know how you can sharpen your skills in that department? Read fiction.

That’s according to an Emory University study written up at Mic. Gabe Bergado has the story. “It’s not news that reading has countless benefits: Poetry stimulates parts of the brain linked to memory and sparks self-reflection … But readers of fiction? They’re a special breed.

“The study: A 2013 Emory University study looked at the brains of fiction readers. [Neuroscientist Gregory Berns and coauthors] compared the brains of people after they read to the brains of people who didn’t read. The brains of the readers — they read Robert Harris’ Pompeii over a nine-day period at night — showed more activity in certain areas than those who didn’t read.

“Specifically, researchers found heightened connectivity in the left temporal cortex, part of the brain typically associated with understanding language. The researchers also found increased connectivity in the central sulcus of the brain, the primary sensory region, which helps the brain visualize movement. When you visualize yourself scoring a touchdown while playing football, you can actually somewhat feel yourself in the action. A similar process happens when you envision yourself as a character in a book: You can take on the emotions they are feeling. …

“Need more proof? Psychologists David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano at the New School for Social Research focused on the effect of literary fiction, rather than popular fiction, on readers.  For the experiment, participants either read a piece of literary fiction or popular fiction, followed by identifying facial emotions solely through the eyes. Those who read literary fiction scored consistently higher, by about 10%.

” ‘We believe that one critical difference between lit and pop fiction is the extent to which the characters are complex, ambiguous, difficult to get to know, etc. (in other words, human) versus stereotyped, simple,’ Castano wrote to Mic.” More here.

Thank you, Claire, for sending this. You know what I like.

WP_20141231_17_28_21_Pro

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Design Your Scientific Necktie

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

If you are a scientist who wears ties, or if you know one, consider designing your own at Vermont-based Cerebella. Past design ideas have resulted in frog-skin, moon-jellyfish, pollen-tetrad, and obelia (a tiny marine animal) neckties.

At Cerebella’s blog, Lucy Partman wrote on October 13 about how she ended up Chief Curator for the company.

“I grew up in New York City … going to museums— and I mean a lot of museums —especially the Met. … My parents … are designers and own a clothing store in Manhattan so dinner table discussions often involved fabric prints, shirt designs, sizes, quantities, and window displays …

“At LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts … I went from biology to painting, from art history to calculus.

“At Yale, I tried to continue this interdisciplinary education. I majored in both history of art and biology and constantly sought to intertwine these interests, passions. For example, I worked with conservators — who work in a hybrid art studio and science lab — at the Yale Center for British Art to conserve paintings …

“I founded an organization at the Slifka Center called Slifka Arts to provide students the opportunity to curate and exhibit student art. … Shortly after the opening of an exhibit I curated at the Slifka Center called Only in a Woman: Microscopic Images by Harvey Kliman, MD, PhD — which will soon be exhibited at Brown Medical School — Ariele [Faber, Cerebella founder,] contacted me regarding the exhibit and Cerebella. Our conversation has continued ever since.” More here.

Photo: Cerebella
Frog-skin Necktie. Each Cerebella textile pattern is designed by finding inspiration under the microscope.

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Artists Return Discarded Museum to Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 21, 2014| 4 Comments »

No matter how bad things get in the great world, there will always be someone who starts a quirky, individualistic project just for the love of it, reassuring us all.

In Providence recently, a few folks got together to resurrect an abandoned natural history museum partly to see what an early museum looked like, partly because it was a shame to throw it all out.

In the NY Times, Henry Founatain wrote,  “If museums are meant to preserve objects forever, then forever ended here in 1945.

“That year, Brown University’s natural history museum, which included multitudes of animal skeletons and specimens among its 50,000 items, as well as anthropological curiosities like rope made from human hair, was thrown away.

“It was a sad end to what had been a labor of love for John Whipple Potter Jenks, a Brown alumnus, taxidermist and naturalist who founded the teaching museum in 1871.

“But Jenks had died in 1894 — on the steps of the museum, no less — and what by then was known as the Jenks Museum fell into disarray. It was shuttered in 1915, and the objects were scattered or stored until most of them were hauled, in 92 truckloads, to a nearby dump in 1945.

“But now the Jenks Museum lives again, at least temporarily, in an exhibition that is as much about art as it is about science.

“A group of Brown graduate students, with help from a faculty adviser and a New York artist, has rounded up a few surviving odds and ends, commissioned artists to recreate some of the vanished objects, and installed it all in Rhode Island Hall, the home of the original museum. The exhibition, which also includes a recreation of Jenks’s office as it might have looked in the year of his death, will be on display until spring.” Read more here.

The Lost Museum will be on display in Rhode Island Hall on the Brown University campus, 60 George Street, the Jenks Museum’s original home, through May 2015.

Photo: Mike Cohea/Brown University
The office of John Whipple Potter Jenks, who founded the natural history museum at Brown University, was recreated for an exhibition called Lost Museum.

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Saving Fireflies

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 15, 2014| 6 Comments »

Fireflies are not as ubiquitous as they used to be, and that’s a concern. They are like the canary in the mine. If fireflies go, other species go.

What has caused the decline? Lawn chemicals? Rapid urbanization? Scientists want to know.

NY Times reporter Alan Bllinder writes from Greenville, South Carolina, about a crowdsourced research project to help figure out what’s going on.

“As dusk faded over the home of Jeremy Lyons and his sons on a recent evening here, one ritual of the Southern summer — the soft hiss of a can of mosquito repellent — signaled that the start of another was near.

“And although Raine Lyons, 6, grimaced, coughed and flinched during his dousing with bug spray, he soon stood near a chain-link fence in his backyard and shouted, in speedy succession: ‘Found one! Found one! Found one!’ Mr. Lyons, perched on his knee next to Raine, was almost completely silent as he tapped the screen of his cellphone again and again and again.

“There, on a weeknight in a South Carolina backyard, a father and his son, in their different ways, were counting fireflies. But an evening among fireflies was not merely a modest round of summertime nostalgia; instead, it was part of a multiyear quest by Clemson University researchers to measure the firefly population and investigate whether urbanization, especially here in the fast-growing South, threatens the insects.” Read how they are going about it here.

I hope we can reverse the decline of fireflies. I have so many happy memories of them from my childhood and my children’s childhood.

Photo: Jacob Biba for The New York Times
Raine Lyons counting fireflies alongside his father, Jeremy, in Greenville, S.C., as volunteers in the Vanishing Firefly Project of Clemson University.

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Sprites Electrify the Atmosphere

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2014| 3 Comments »

I’ve put off writing about sprites because I’m not sure I can explain what they are  — powerful upward lightning flashes that send electricity around the earth and were originally going to be photographed by an astronaut on the ill-fated Columbia.

A team of scientists and a few daredevil pilots flew repeatedly into storms to prove the visions were real. The television show Nova covered the quest.

“NARRATOR: On a stormy night, in Denver, a team of scientists takes to the air to investigate a mystery.

“RONALD WILLIAMS (United States Air Force): I reported it, and nobody believed me.

“NARRATOR: They’re trying to catch a burst of energy so fleeting and hard to see that scientists call it by the ethereal name of ‘sprite.’

“EARLE WILLIAMS (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): The bolts that cause sprites are superbolts, the kind of lightning that’ll blow your T.V. sky high. …

“KERRI CAHOY (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): You can see airglow that’s more diffuse and just in layers than the curtain-like aurora.

“NARRATOR: NOVA takes to the air, on a quest to record these elusive events.

“GEOFF MCHARG (United States Air Force Academy): Sprite!

“NARRATOR: And the effort also continues above, from the vantage point of space, where the work had it’s beginning during the ill-fated Columbia mission, with Israeli astronaut Ilon Ramon.

“YOAV YAIR (The Open University of Israel): I asked him, ‘Please bring me one sprite image.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you a couple.’

“NARRATOR: Ramon’s colleagues now continue where he left off.

“SATOSHI FURUKAWA (Japanese Astronaut): We must take over their work. I thought that was the survivors’ duty.

“NARRATOR: Their dramatic discoveries are revealing that we live on an electrified planet, surrounded by a global circuit that rings the earth. And like a planetary heartbeat, we can now detect it.”

More here.

 Image: Nova

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Meadowscaping for Biodiversity

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 11, 2014| 2 Comments »

My friend Jean Devine is always up to something interesting. A Brown U grad, with an MBA from Simmons, she used to work in investor relations but in recent years has been testing the waters of social entrepreneurship.

Her latest initiative, with Barbara Passero of Sandpiper Creative, is called meadowscaping and is intriguing on many levels.

With access to a Waltham church lawn for a summer youth program, Jean and Barbara will work with kids to convert the yard into a meadow that uses native species from Garden in the Woods and provides a habitat to the bugs and other small creatures that make a healthy environment.

From the Meadowscaping for Biodiversity website: Meadowscaping “is an outdoor, project-based, environmental education program that provides middle school youth with real-world experiences in STEAM learning (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math), while inspiring and empowering them to address challenges to the environment and our society.

“Today, few children spend time experiencing Nature and the benefits of outdoor recreation, education, and contemplation. Founder and former Director of the Children and Nature Network (C& NN) Richard Louv coined the phrase nature-deficit disorder to describe the negative effects of reduced outdoor time on children’s development. …

“Children who spend little time outdoors may value nature less than children who spend time outdoors in free play. Similarly, children who feel part of something bigger than themselves may … understand their dependence on a clean environment and know that they are responsible for caring for the Earth as their home.” More here.

The idea behind the meadowscaping summer program is that children, both at a young age and as they become adults, can actually do something about the environment.

Remember our post “The Doctor Is In” about the woman who sets up in a Providence park to listen to your worries about global warming (here)? Stop worrying and do something, say the meadowscape entrepreneurs. Give up lawn chemicals, plant a meadow, provide a home for tiny necessary critters, and work to make change.

white-iris-in-morning

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92-Year-Old Metallurgist

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Gregg tweeted recently about Robinson Meyer’s Atlantic article on 92-year-old metallurgist Ursula Franklin.

Meyer writes, “It’s hard to describe what Ursula Franklin’s done in her life. There’s just too much.

“The 92-year-old metallurgist pioneered the field of archeometry, the science of dating archaeologically discovered bronzes, metals, and ceramics. Her research into spiking levels of radioactive strontium in baby teeth factored heavily into the U.S. government’s decision to institute a nuclear test ban.

“She delivered the Massey Lectures—an important, annual series of talks delivered by Canadian public intellectuals—in 1989, and she was the first woman to be named University Professor at the University of Toronto, the university’s highest position.

“She was also born in Munich in 1921, and was imprisoned in a Nazi work camp for the last 18 months of the war.”

Meyers’s questions cover much of Franklin’s life, her pacifism, and her trail-blazing for women scientists. It’s a long interview. Here’s a taste.

“Once you were at the University of Toronto … did you see the university change over your time there, and just generally what was it like to be a female professor of engineering during the ’70s and ’80s?”

Franklin answers, “Well, pretty lonely. You know the real difficulty is to protect and advance your women students, and to see that they are in a hassle-free learning environment. When I came to the university, I’d been around long enough to know that I wasn’t one of the gang, and I never would be. I didn’t have a desire to be one of the boys.

“But the great wish—to give my women students a hassle-free, happy learning environment—that’s what’s difficult. The culture of engineering is not a culture of acceptance and understanding of anything that is female and—at the same time—equal. So that’s… that’s a real job. It was a long and hard [work] in this, and it’s by no means yet all done.”

I remember the fuss over strontium 90 in milk. How great to read about this woman ‘s role in uncovering the problem and to see that she is going strong at 92. More at the Atlantic.

Ursula Franklin  photo

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Origami Microscope

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2014| 2 Comments »

If you happen to be in the jungle with nothing but paper, a ball lens, a button battery, an LED, a switch, 3 cents worth of copper tape, and a need to see if there is E. coli in the drinking water, you’re in luck! You can make your own microscope.

Writes Keith Hartnett at the Boston Globe, “In recent years there’s been a trend in international development work towards building low-cost versions of key tools for widespread dissemination—inexpensive computers that let Indonesian fisherman check the weather before they go out to sea, or clean-burning stoves that replace coal and improve air quality in family huts.

“Now a laboratory at Stanford University has introduced a microscope that’s made of paper, assembled using principles of origami, and costs less than $1 to manufacture. It’s called Foldscope. …

“Despite the simple construction, Foldscope is a capable tool of real science. Users can adjust the focus using paper tabs, and the engineering team, led by bioengineer Manu Prakash and funded in part by the Gates Foundation, explained in a paper [PDF] that Foldscope ‘can provide over 2,000X magnification with submicron resolution.’ ” More. Hat tip to MIT Technology Review.

I wonder if I could get a gig folding paper at John’s Optics for Hire. I just made an origami fortune-teller for John’s son on Saturday, after all.

 

 

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Toddlers: Memory Like an Elephant

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2014| 3 Comments »

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou never know what you’ll find at Andrew Sullivan’s blog.

Today he notes research on the memory of toddlers. A new study has demonstrated that three-year-olds have memories of  seeing someone once, back when they were one.

Danish researcher Osman “Kingo and his team first renewed contact with parents and their children who’d taken part in an earlier study when the children were age one. That earlier research involved the infant children interacting with one of two researchers for 45 minutes – either a Scandinavian-Caucasian man or a Scandinavian-African man.

“Now two years on, 50 of these parents and children – the latter now aged three – were invited back to the exact same lab (hopefully cueing their earlier memories). Here the children were shown two simultaneous 45-second videos side by side. One video was a recording of the researcher – either the Scandinavian-Caucasian or Scandinavian-African man – interacting with them two years earlier; the other video showed the other researcher (the one they hadn’t met) interacting with a different child in the exact same way. …

“The children spent significantly more time looking at the video that featured the researcher they’d never met. … This result provides strong evidence that the children had some recognition of the researcher they’d met, and were drawn more strongly to look at the unfamiliar researcher.”

More at Andrew Sullivan, here, and at Research Digest at the British Psychological Society, here.

I am especially delighted that there’s a bit of proof for what I have long insisted was true. (No one ever believes that I remember taking my first steps.)

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Creating a Voice, Literally

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 19, 2014| 3 Comments »

National Public Radio recently featured a researcher who has figured out a way to help people who can’t talk by matching the sounds they are able to make to someone else’s voice and creating a synthetic voice.

“Speech scientist Rupal Patel creates customized synthetic voices that enable people who can’t speak to communicate in a unique voice that embodies their personality.

“Rupal Patel directs the Communication Analysis and Design Laboratory at Northeastern University. She helped found VocaliD, an organization working to help the millions of people who use computerized devices to communicate in unique voices.

“Patel’s technique to move beyond the usual generic male voice. She samples the tones of those with severe speech disorders and matches them with a surrogate talker. By blending the two, the team can create a synthetic voice to match the person using it.”

Check out the NPR story here.

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Your Thesis Is on What?!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Carolyn Johnson’s science column in the Boston Globe yesterday had a funny bit about the blog, LOLmythesis, “a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the futility and incrementalism that can seem to be at the root of a project that has basically co-opted a person’s life.” She means science projects.

“Harvard senior Angie Frankel told the origin story of LOLmythesis on National Public Radio,” writes Johnson, “explaining that ‘I have killed so many fish’ sometimes just feels much more accurate than the true title of her thesis, “Characterizing the Role of [A Specific Gene] in Second Heart Field Progenitor Cells — A Close Look at Zebrafish Embryonic Cardiogenesis.”

There are other funny thesis titles at LOLmythesis from universities around the world. Here are a few.

“Rocks that are next to each other in Massachusetts now were also next to each other 400 million years ago.” — Geology, Amherst College

“A newly discovered worm protein does the same thing as a more well-known worm protein.” — Biology, MIT

“People reach faster and straighter to [take] pictures of cake than pictures of vegetables.” — Cognitive Neuroscience, Brown University

“Turns out my 3 years of research made zero ripples in reproductive biology. But spending 3 years researching bull sperm serves as a great first date and bar topic.” — Reproductive Biology & Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University

Read more here. And how about sending me your own? I remember making up silly titles for possible papers when I was in college, but the funnier part of my fake title “Soap Imagery in ‘Troilus and Cressida’ ” was that someone actually thought it could make a good paper.

Photo: DoctorMacro.com
Pick a thesis title for this research. How about “People from similar backgrounds tend to be wary on first acquaintance.”

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