Video
sciencepunk | February 16, 2011How do bees chat to one another? By shaking their funky butts, of course! This video was made by Andy Quitmeyer, a digital media Master's student, for Georgia Tech's MARS lab, in a project funded by the US National Science Foundation.
Bees were one of my favourite subjects when I was studying for my biology degree, who couldn't fall in love with these adorable little chaps*?
*actually, all the bees you see here are female. The males don't work, they just gorge themselves on honey, mate, and die. If you think that sounds fun, bear in mind that they die because the penis is torn off during…
cevans | February 14, 2011
In 2007, my friends at m ss ng peces and I started work on a new Internet-television show called RESET, for the Sundance Channel. The idea was to make a show designed for computers to watch, that could teach them what it was like to be human -- a show that, while ostensibly made for human beings, would also nourish our computers' circuit boards with generous descriptions of the richness of human experience. Obviously this is just an artistic conceit, and not, as far as I know, a practicable reality, but it does raise a lot of interesting questions. You probably spend your entire day within…
jtoney | February 12, 2011
Anyone who has thought about teaching and learning amidst the explosive growth of emedia and online social networking should take a look at this video by Prof. Michael Wesch at Kansas State University.
It is an exciting and challenging time to be an educator. I believe that the web can be a two-headed beast that we must nurture and manage with care. It can provide a wealth of useful information as well as a vast wasteland. There is a long path beginning with data and information that can lead to knowledge and wisdom. It is our job to guide those who want to learn through this often…
cagapakis | February 12, 2011I had a great conversation with Maggie Koerth-Baker from BoingBoing for bloggingheads.tv Science Saturday. We talked about all sorts of sciency stuff, including her upcoming book on the challenges of renewable energy, synthetic biology, the similarities between cheese and the human body, women in science/blogging, and octopus brains. I had a lot of fun chatting with Maggie and I learned a lot, and I hope you will too!
cagapakis | February 11, 2011Synthetic biologists work on designing living cells, but engineered bacteria don't usually come up when you think of "designer" things. This year however, a synthetic biology design is up for a Brit Insurance Design of the Year award, up against the Lanvin Spring collection, Angry Birds, and Rock Band 3! Designers Daisy Ginsberg and James King worked in collaboration with the 2009 Cambridge iGEM team (including awesome blogger Lab Rat) to imagine ways that people could use bacteria engineered to produce pigments in the future. Check out their video about the science and design of E. chromi:
jtoney | February 6, 2011Source. Linkin Park's Chester Bennington / Photo by Ian Witlen.
If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one... Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Bhagavad Gita
From the first moment of "Requiem" from A Thousand Suns, ripples of peripatetic paroxysms began to spread across the sold out Madison Square Garden arena the evening of February 4. Peripatetic, because the source of LP's music was dynamic, shifting from percussion to keyboards to the trading lead rapid-fire vocals of rapping Mike Shinoda to…
drorzel | February 4, 2011I've been watching the Al Jazeera English livestream off and on this week to keep up with events in Egypt. At some point, SteelyKid came in while I had it on, saw shots of the cheering crowds from Tuesday, and said "People dancing!"
Sometime on Wednesday, she marched over to me, and demanded to watch a video. I asked what she wanted, and she said "People dancing!" At that point, though, the live video was of people throwing Molotov cocktails off a hotel roof onto protesters below. I didn't think that was really appropriate toddler fare, so I showed her this instead:
Three-ish years later,…
cagapakis | February 1, 2011Scientists aren't known for their fashion sense, but they do have their own unique charm, as you can see in this episode of In The Lab, with Bill Cunningham.
jtoney | January 27, 2011
Education reform may be one of the most important initiatives of our generation. It is a complex and sensitive topic, with a wide range of views from families, teachers and their unions (if public), states, the federal government and from think tanks.
The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has recently produced a series of videos that discuss education reform. Narrated by Sir Ken Robinson, the imperative for reform is laid out using a compelling graphic story line.
In case you are not already familiar, I highly recommend it as a resource to enhance…
cagapakis | January 26, 2011I've been playing a bit with the alpha of Qwiki, a new website that offers users an innovative "information experience." The site collects images, videos, and text about topics from the internet and then displays the images future-aesthetically while reading the information in a delightful robot voice. There are still some kinks to work out, but overall it's kind of cute and fun! Here is Qwiki Science:
And Qwiki Science Heroes--Carl Sagan:
Just like on wikipedia, it's easy to fall into a procrastination spiral clicking on related links, but it's worth signing up and poking around!
jtoney | January 24, 2011Imagine being able to observe the health status of your brain streaming real-time in 3D. Medical treatments for a range of neurovascular, neurological, cancerous and trauma-induced conditions would be far more effective, because snapshots over time would reveal the progression of a disease or damage.
This is not science fiction. Scientists at Stanford University have reported a new brain imaging technique in the journal Nature Medicine that takes a major step towards this goal. Proof of concept was demonstrated using mice.
Figure 3:
a) Two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional…
jtoney | January 20, 2011
Is kissing unique to humans? Why do we do it? What is its biological role, with our spouse, our children, our friends and family? {I can't imagine saying goodnight to my children without a peck on their foreheads or cheek - why am I compelled to do so?}
These are questions that researcher and science journalist Sheril Kirshenbaum addresses in her newly released book "The Science of Kissing - What Our Lips Are Telling Us" (Grand Central Publishing, January 2011.)
While this book has already been reviewed by the press, the publisher has invited me to write a review for ScienceBlogs, from…
cagapakis | January 20, 2011What do you get when you combine two of my favorite things, synthetic biology and documentary film? We may never know if Sam and George don't get the funding they need on Kickstarter!
I don't usually do this kind of thing, but I met these guys while they were filming in Boston and their movie promises to be really good and really interesting and really educational (and I might even be in it!). You can check out some of their videos from the road on their vimeo page, including this one from the University of Wisconsin iGEM team:
jtoney | January 20, 2011
This is one of my favorite examples of Vi Hart's creative, instructive doodling to teach mathematics.
In this case, the doodles are "binary trees." If you are not familiar with the concept, I am confident that you will be after this brief video!
jtoney | January 19, 2011Inducing a worm to lay eggs with laser light from Samuel Lab on Vimeo.
A research group at Harvard University, led by Prof. Samuel has developed a new way to manipulate nerves using lasers, given the cheeky term "CoLBeRT"{reference to Stephen Colbert}. In science terms, CoLBeRT is:
Controlling Locomotion and Behavior in Real Time
Here's how it works. The nematode is a simple organism that contains 302 neurons that can be genetically altered to make a foreign protein sensitive to a certain type of light - such as that coming from a laser. By tuning the laser to a specific wavelength,…
cagapakis | January 19, 2011My friend Patrick is embarking on a 48 experiment, studying circadian rhythm and destroying his own in the process. He's also embarking on a social media experiment, live-streaming the whole thing on ustream.
Tune in to watch real science in action and the effects of sleep deprivation on scientists! You can even ask him questions during the three hours between experimental time points!
jtoney | January 17, 2011
Math is boring. We hear that every day. But there are exceptions. Consider Sir Isaac Newton. He matriculated at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge in 1661, became a Fellow in 1667, and created the "Newtonian" branch of physics. But many may not be aware that he was a master doodler while sitting in math class.
A number of years ago, I visited the University of Cambridge library, and happened across an extraordinary display. It contained class notes of Sir Isaac Newton, taken while he was an undergraduate student. The notes were taken in meticulous handwriting, with…
jtoney | January 17, 2011OpenStreetMap - Project Haiti from ItoWorld on Vimeo.
In Swahili, "ushahidi" means "testimony." I would like to share with you an emerging technology, Ushahidi, an open source platform that can be used by anyone anywhere to share information that can improve disaster response and perhaps someday influence public policy. I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would have appreciated this.
The 31 second video provides a dramatic example. Before the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, reliable road maps were scarce, particularly if you wanted to know which roads were open. Thanks to Ushahidi, this all changed…
drorzel | January 17, 2011Part of this past weekend's meeting of the Committee on Informing the Public was to evaluate 100+ proposals for "mini-grants" of up to $10,000 for new outreach activities. It wouldn't be appropriate to go into detail about any of the proposals or what we decided (the PI's of the proposals we decided to fund will be notified soon), but there was one issue that came up again and again that I think is appropriate for the blog, which is what should be considered as a successful effort, particularly in the online world.
A large number of the proposals we were considering had "new media" components…
cagapakis | January 15, 2011
With The Symbiotic Household, Elliott P. Montgomery seeks to find answers to problems caused by climate change. Low-cost, low energy solutions are proposed through complex genetic engineering of domesticated insects--"What better way to deal with a future need than with a future technology?"
The project is deliberatively provocative; "By offering a problematic answer, I want to encourage viewers to question the entire scenario and thereby take part in the discussion." What do you think?
via we make money not art