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"Solid Liquid Gas"
“Its like 5th grade science mixed with sculpture. Its about being curious and playful. There is still a lot to wonder about.”
–Caleb Charland, photographer, physics enthusiast
From My Modern Metropolis:
Caleb Charland demonstrates lessons in physics and mathematics with his mind-blowing photography. Inspired by children’s books of science experiments, he photographs everyday objects (like matches, pens and mirrors) in ways we’ve never imagined, often using multiple exposures to tell the story.
…The beauty of it all is that there’s an honesty to Charland’s work. By transforming everyday household objects into unexpected experiences, he makes us appreciate multiple disciplines; art, science and photography. In addition, his work evokes that sense of curiosity that often lays dormant in us as adults. While looking at his photos, you can’t help but marvel at the scientific laws that govern us and, at the same time, feel as though Charland’s somehow cheated them.
(Hat tip: Ed)
Catherine McEver makes art out of Wonder Bread. I’m not really sure why. But it is kind of fun to look at.
(Hat tip: Diana)
Crop circles are “quixotic, beautiful” and (brace yourself) “seem to have no larger meaning”. Ann Finkbeiner told me so:
Crop circles have been seen for centuries. How they got there is a little mysterious and has been the subject of a great number of theories: scientific ones include hill-induced vortices, and less-scientific ones include aliens. The majority of the circles are not mysterious at all: they’ve been done by hoaxer/artists and the most recent ones are increasingly mathematical, fractal, and gorgeous. The artists work in teams and use some of the same math that nature uses — like the golden ratio — to create the same designs nature does.
Over the past few years, Pawan Sinha has worked out a provocative theory that might help explain these anecdotes: people with autism have trouble with ‘temporal integration’, or drawing upon information learned in the past to anticipate the future.
The basic idea is that meaningful social interactions — which are difficult for people with autism — hinge on precisely synchronized events. For example, to understand spoken language, you must quickly and seamlessly integrate sounds to form meaningful words: myoo plus zik becomes music, not muse, use or sick. Similarly, imagine how difficult it would be to have a party conversation if you couldn’t monitor, in real time, your companion’s facial expressions or gestures in response to your words.
In between setting world records, carrying out vision experiments on his infant son, and launching a campaign to build a large eye hospital in New Delhi, Sinha has led an effort to test about 40 children with autism on a variety of visual and auditory experiments. Preliminary data from his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) show that these children do have deficits in temporal integration.
GE has just announced the winners of its IN Cell Image Competition, in which scientists submit gorgeous cellular images produced by the company’s IN Cell Analyzer machines. The winners were determined by 2,000 scientist-voters. Here’s my favorite. (It didn’t win, and GE only posted the names of the three winners, so unfortunately I have no one to give credit to!)
Co-culture of human epidermal keratinocytes and melanocytes stained for melanocyte PMel17 (red), keratinocyte cytokeratin (green) and DNA (blue).
(Hat tip: the one and only bioephemera)
Alright, I’ll admit it: I love medical dramas. I love that every intern, no matter how exhausted or stressed, no matter how many cups of coffee or donuts consumed, always looks gorgeous. I love their hallway flirtations and their janitor-closet trysts. I love knowing that the first treatment never works, and the last one almost always does.
Apparently though, real doctors aren’t so enamored. A group recently published a study of “bioethicical and professionalism content” of House and Grey’s Anatomy. From Nature Medicine‘s blog:
Their detailed study concluded that the physicians in these fictional dramas followed guidelines for informed consent in 43% of medical cases. Moreover, when patients refused treatment, the doctors respected their decision in about half the cases. Here’s the real catch, though: The study found that interpersonal relationships, both among the doctors and with their patients, were ‘exemplary’ a mere 5% of the time.
I recommend reading the whole post — they’ve got some great clips of “egregious examples”. But I think the authors of the study should, well, take a chill pill. And lay off my TV!
I love holidays, mostly because they give me an excuse to bake cutesy things. And aren’t these lemon meringue cupcakes just darling? Here’s how I did it:
Carl Zimmer has a knack for writing about things I’ve always wondered about, but never bothered to look up myself.
Like, I wonder why leaves turn colors? I wonder what dogs think about? I wonder how museum-artist types know how to draw accurate pictures of dinosaurs or human ancestors that they’ve never seen in the flesh?
The answer to that last one, as Carl writes in his latest column at the New York Times, is that artists do the best they can with the known scientific facts, and take a bit of creative license with characteristics that are less certain.
For instance, take illustrator Nuka Godtfredsen, who drew the image of Inuk, the 4,000-year-old paleo-Eskimo that made the cover of Nature last month:
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He studied photographs of Chukchi people to give Inuk a face. He also took note of the fact that, despite Inuk’s genetic propensity for baldness, the tufts of his hair were up to eight inches long. As a compromise, he gave Inuk a receding hairline and a mullet.
This petri dish holds a plant pathogen, Cladosporium herbarum (green leaves), and a yeast, Rhodotorula (orange petals). It’s just one of many fab-u-lous images featured on the ‘Life Imitating Life’ slideshow up at Seedmagazine.com. Go check ‘em out!
