Whoa… it’s a CYCLOPS SHARK!
Via National Geographic.
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Category: *
October 13, 2011
Luke Jerram’s amazing microbial glasswork
By Luke Jerram: go here to see more of this collection. Note, I’ve written about Luke’s work previously in Seed.
October 13, 2011
Bad ass Pokemon (I mean Phylomon) cards. Looking to hire some artists – leave your portfolio website if you’re interested.
Just saying that biodiversity isn’t all about beauty and things being cute and cuddly.
These cards at the Phylogame website rock! And in case, you’re new to the Phylomon idea, it’s basically a crowdsourced art, science and gaming project that revolves around the reality of children knowing WAY more about Pokemon than they do about the flora and fauna around them. This, of course, is problematic since one might suggest that it’s not a bad thing for children to also know a little more about the real environment around them (a more detailed description of the project can be found here).
This is also a post to say that I’m on the lookout for artists to contribute to special Phylomon “decks.” In particular, we’ve got funding to seek out art contributions at about $200 per image, with a preference of hiring each artist to contribute at least 5 or so images at a time. Image copyright would remain with the artist, but we ask that the phylo project is allowed to showcase them online in card format in a non-derivative, attribution, non-commercial manner; as well as allow non-profits, museums, educational institutions to use the image (but only in the form of phylo cards) in physical decks that may be sold only for agreed upon outreach project fund raising purposes.
Anyway, if you’re a freelance artist and the project (and the pay) sounds interesting to you, then please do leave your portfolio website in the comments below (we’re also going to contact a few artists who have already so nicely allowed us to use existing art). As well, just so you know, we’re actually looking for art that veers a bit away from the usual conservative realistic type of animal art (i.e. character design buffs are welcome!). Ultimately, we’re looking for art that might actually be considered a bit Pokemon-ish but with details that reflect the real-life organisms.
Oh… And if you want to see more of our existing catalog of cards, then just go to http://phylogame.org/cards. You can also print more, by just hitting “select” on any cards you like – there’s about 300 to choose from, as well as about 500 DIY cards that kids have drawn. When you do this, the card should appear in the “selected cards” shopping basket. When you’re finished, just click on the “Selected Cards” link and it’ll just show you just the ones you’ve picked (6 at a time).
The best part is that you can just print that webpage (i.e. what you see there), and it’ll automatically produce a printout of just the cards (6 at a time) and at print quality resolution.
Game on!
Dave Ng
October 13, 2011
Naked Mole Rat Genome Sequenced.
Paper link: (E. B. Kim et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature10533;2011)
“The naked mole rat is one of Mother Nature’s great survivors. The busy underground lairs in which the animals live almost always run low on oxygen and high on carbon dioxide. Steady subterranean temperatures have sapped the creatures’ ability to regulate their body temperature. Yet what they sacrifice in quality of life they more than make up for in extraordinary quantity. Comfortably the longest-living rodent, naked mole rats can live for more than 30 years. They seem impervious to cancer and do not feel some types of pain.
All of which means that the frankly ugly naked mole rat could prove a sight for sore eyes in the biomedical community. The information published on its genome and transcriptome has already revealed patterns of gene expression different from those in humans, mice and rats, and this may underlie its longevity. With further study, mechanisms of ageing, genetic regulation of lifespan, adaption to extreme environments, low-oxygen tolerance, cancer resistance, sexual development and hormonal regulation are up for grabs.”
Via Nature. Image from Livescience.com.
October 12, 2011
Aorta tell you how much I love you.
From a collection called “Nerdy Dirty” by Nicole Martinez. There’s a few of them, and they’re all very nice. Check them out at this link. For now, the one below has a little anatomy…
October 12, 2011
Nanokids. Molecular structures that look like people.
Apparently real. As in some of these suckers have been synthesized and reported in Nature – link.
October 12, 2011
The “I pity the fool” cell.
Awesome. Via Velica DeviantArt page, hat tip to Fresh Photons.
October 10, 2011
Krebs cycle and other bicycles not allowed on railings.
Via tumblr, biology tag but found all over the place. i.e. can’t find original source.
October 10, 2011
In case you ever want to see Pi to the first one million digits.
Here’s the start:
And to see it all in its one million glory, then just click here. (From Piday.org)
October 7, 2011
Space required to transport 60 people. Bicycles FTW!
Great graphic from the City of Muenster; Germany’s bicycle capital. Yes, yes, we can wax rhetoric about the fact that four people can fit in a single car – but really now, how often does that actually happen?
October 7, 2011
Powers of Ten. Like Star Wars, the original version is still the best.
I remember seeing this in elementary school and thinking, “Whoa…” The remarkable thing is that it is still awesome.
October 7, 2011
Crapbook: social networking via the microbial profile found in your feces
Julian Davies, a colleague of mine at UBC, coined the term “crapbook” in a lecture today. He was talking about a site called “My.Microbe” and, well, I had to check it out.
“The non-profit programme MyMicrobes, launched today, is inviting people to have their gut bacteria sequenced for about €1,500 (US$2,100). Acting as both social network and DNA database, the website offers a place for people to share diet tips, stories and gastrointestinal woes with one another. In exchange, researchers hope to gather a wealth of data about the bacteria living in people’s guts.” (From Nature – link)
Kind of wierd, actually. And expensive too!
October 6, 2011
This is incredible: digital visual translation of brain activity. Raises some interesting questions about science and aesthetics.
Saw this earlier, but only just getting to it now. Tagged because this might come in useful for discussions on whether science can empirically analyse something like aesthetics. i.e. if we can code brain activity for what you see, can we code brain activity for how we “feel” about what we see…
Abstract goes:
“Quantitative modeling of human brain activity can provide crucial insights about cortical representations and can form the basis for brain decoding devices. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have modeled brain activity elicited by static visual patterns and have reconstructed these patterns from brain activity. However, blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals measured via fMRI are very slow, so it has been difficult to model brain activity elicited by dynamic stimuli such as natural movies. Here we present a new motion-energy encoding model that largely overcomes this limitation. The model describes fast visual information and slow hemodynamics by separate components. We recorded BOLD signals in occipitotemporal visual cortex of human subjects who watched natural movies and fit the model separately to individual voxels. Visualization of the fit models reveals how early visual areas represent the information in movies. To demonstrate the power of our approach, we also constructed a Bayesian decoder by combining estimated encoding models with a sampled natural movie prior. The decoder provides remarkable reconstructions of the viewed movies. These results demonstrate that dynamic brain activity measured under naturalistic conditions can be decoded using current fMRI technology.”
Gallant’s lab page has a great summary, and link to abstract and article can be found here.
October 6, 2011
And the answer to the physics question: because there is an elephant in the way.
Can’t find source for this one: from the internetz?
October 5, 2011
The most important thing I learned from a teacher. via@boingboing @maggiekb1 @stevesilberman
This paragraph about the unmeasured successes of what good teachers do is just about pitch perfect. The essays that the post refers are also well worth a look.
“The role that teachers play in influencing the lives of their students is something that’s been lost in current debates about education mandates and standardized testing. Teaching isn’t just about making sure kids can pass exams. It’s also about helping future adults find their gifts, discover their interests, and learn who they want to be. That’s a hard thing to quantify. You can’t really put together a concise list of “Children I’ve Inspired” for a CV. But this is the part of a teacher’s job that is the most lasting. What we remember about good teachers isn’t necessarily the dry facts they taught us, it’s the doors they opened, the curiosity they kindled, and the moments where they made us rethink everything.”
Via Boing Boing.
popperfont.net 
