bioephemera

TGIF: Annals of Gullibility

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:10:44 -0500

If I weren't so darn busy, I'd be tempted to read this book:

As you can tell from the photo, I've been spending a lot of time in the library. Sorry for the low post volume - I have quite a bit to write about the Harvard Lab opening and other things, and hope to get back on the blog in a few days. Have a great weekend!

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Day of the Dead at the Zoo

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:17:29 -0500

Seen in Cambridge, MA: a red-eyed skeletal zombie hippo. Paint-your-own ceramics was never like this when I was a kid!

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Willy Chyr's Balluminescence

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 08:32:00 -0500

Talk about ephemera - Willy Chyr makes bioart out of balloons! Check out his installation Balluminescence:

Balluminescence - Lights, Balloons, Jellyfish! was commissioned by Science Chicago and was created for the program's finale signature event - LabFest! Millennium Park. An interactive installation, Balluminescence engaged participants in the process of creating art inspired by science. A team of balloon artists taught LabFest! attendants how to create simple balloon shapes, which were then added to one of three balloon jellyfish costumes. Through the activity, participants learned about air pressure and the biology of jellyfish.

Willy got an undergrad degree in physics while performing part-time in a circus. How awesome is that?

Thanks to Tyler for the heads-up.

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Butterflies in Space

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:14:14 -0500

Macro Detail from a print from Press NY.
via Blue Barnhouse

Unfortunately the Press NY website appears to be defunct, but this image should be in the new letterpress book being compiled over at Blue Barnhouse. Check out their blog for more info on the book!

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The Laboratory at Harvard

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:01:31 -0500

I'm currently attending the Grand Opening of the new Laboratory at Harvard University, "an exhibition and meeting space for student idea development within and between the arts and sciences," for a special colloquium on Art, Science, and Creativity featuring David Edwards (author of ArtScience), Lisa Randall, and others. This is awesome. Stay tuned for a report tomorrow.

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The self-defeating culture of graduate education

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:25:45 -0500

Louis Menand has a must-read article on what's wrong with graduate education in the Harvard Magazine:

Lives are warped because of the length and uncertainty of the doctoral education process. Many people drop in and drop out and then drop in again; a large proportion of students never finish; and some people have to retool at relatively advanced ages. Put in less personal terms, there is a huge social inefficiency in taking people of high intelligence and devoting resources to training them in programs that half will never complete and for jobs that most will not get. Unfortunately, there is an institutional efficiency, which is that graduate students constitute a cheap labor force. There are not even search costs involved in appointing a graduate student to teach. . .

But the main reason for academics to be concerned about the time it takes to get a degree has to do with the barrier this represents to admission to the profession. The obstacles to entering the academic profession are now so well known that the students who brave them are already self-sorted before they apply to graduate school. A college student who has some interest in further education, but who is unsure whether she wants a career as a professor, is not going to risk investing eight or more years finding out. The result is a narrowing of the intellectual range and diversity of those entering the field, and a widening of the philosophical and attitudinal gap that separates academic from non-academic intellectuals. Students who go to graduate school already talk the talk, and they learn to walk the walk as well. There is less ferment from the bottom than is healthy in a field of intellectual inquiry. Liberalism needs conservatism, and orthodoxy needs heterodoxy, if only in order to keep on its toes.

While I've seen all the humanitarian and efficiency arguments against churning out exhausted, embittered PhDs who can't find jobs, I hadn't seen such a great linkage of the problem to the growing gulf the public perceives between "real people" and the academy. Anti-intellectualism is on the rise, as we all know, and in the meanwhile we're forcing everyone with any affinity for alternative careers, the people most likely to be interdisciplinary and out-of-the-box, out of the ivory tower. It's an academic ossification that makes no sense.

Read the rest of Menand's article here.

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Google's Phantom Town

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:02:13 -0500

Townephemera? The hamlet of Argleton, UK apparently exists only on Google Maps. The Telegraph reports that Roy Bayfield actually went there to check:

"A colleague of mine spotted the anomaly on Google Maps, and I thought 'I've got to go there'," he said.

"I started to weave this amazing fantasy about the place, an alternative universe, a Narnia-like world. I was really fascinated by the appearance of a non-existent place that the internet had the power to make real and give a semi-existence."

When Mr Bayfield reached Argleton - which appears on Google Maps between Aughton and Aughton Park - he found just acres of green, empty fields.(source)

Bummer. I could have done with a lamp-post or a wardrobe. . . I like the hypothesis that the error was planted by Google itself, as a way of catching illicit reusers of their data.

Thanks to Jake for this one!

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xkcd channels Tolkein and Tufte at the same time

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:51:52 -0500

In case you didn't see it, the latest xkcd is a visual shout-out to data visualization guru Edward Tufte's favorite map, this 1861 depiction of Napoleon's march on Moscow, by Charles Joseph Minard. Yay!

Movie Narrative Charts

Charles Minard's 1869 chart showing the losses in men, their movements, and the temperature of Napoleon's 1812 Russian campaign.

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Magnetic Movie wins "most accurate" award at ISF

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:30:43 -0500

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Last week, at the imagine science film festival in New York, Magnetic Movie won the Nature Scientific Merit Award:

In 2009, the Nature Scientific Merit Award went to the film judged to be not only the most deserving but also the most scientifically accurate, Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhard's Magnetic Movie.

I love Magnetic Movie, too - but what think you about the scientific accuracy angle? See what I had to say about it in my Art vs. Science series, earlier this year:

Art vs. Science, Part One: Semiconductor

Art vs. Science, Part Two: You want raw data? You can't handle raw data!

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Update: Double standards in drug research

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:35:18 -0500

Since I posted last night, DrugMonkey, Dr. Free-Ride, and the Intersection have also checked in with their POVs on this issue. I particularly liked this comment from Dr. Free-Ride:

We get to foot the bill for the effects of other people's "moral failings" here as it is. Why, then, should it be so objectionable to consider spending some public money to figure out how to help people stop? Is it so important that people be punished for their moral failings that we're willing to sustain large-scale societal collateral damage just to enact that punishment?

DrugMonkey linked to a list of talking points from the Coalition to Protect Research, with a promise to return to them later for more discussion. Here's a bit from CPR's email call to action on this issue:

As expected, the scrutiny surrounding research funded by NIH via the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) continues. Much of the research cited by the critics of ARRA was funded by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). While NIH has been working to defend the breadth of its research portfolio and the rigor of its peer review processes, there is concern that the scientific community, patients and communities affected by substance use, addiction and alcohol disorders have remained silent in the wake of attacks on this research. . . Your help is needed to send that message to the administration and Congress underscoring the scientific community's support for NIH's peer review process and for NIDA- and NIAAA-supported research, in particular. Policymakers need to hear that the scientific community supports the broad public health mission of the NIH, the missions of NIDA and NIAAA, in addition to our support for the NIH-peer process.

More responses and resources at CPR's website.

Double standards, politics, and drug treatment research

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:50:11 -0500

My mom, like millions of others in the U.S., has been a smoker for decades. She's tried to quit a few times, but it's been hard for her. The thing that's helped the most so far? The nicotine patch.

While the patch is not a universal cure - see the Mayo Clinic's analysis here - physicians back them because, well, the long-term cost of remaining a smoker is too high (for the smoker, the smoker's family, and society). We all know smokers, and love them, and want to help them quit. Right?

But there's a huge double standard in the media, and in society in general, when it comes to drug abuse treatment. I spent two years as a AAAS Fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and it was both depressing and inspiring: I was deeply impressed with the dedication of the staff, and horrified by the immensity of the problem of addiction in this country. That's why it upsets me that while research to help smokers quit is generally portrayed as necessary and important, increasingly, I'm seeing politicians complain that research to help other drug addicts quit is a waste of money.

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Escherichia Ophelia

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:27:31 -0500

The very epitome of bioephemera, from Microbial Art:

Artist JoWOnder presents a pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia created with bacteria. The demise of the painting is filmed using time-lapse photography, showing a story of death and creation of new life. The colors and animation for '6 Days Goodbye Poems Of Ophelia' were created in a laboratory at Surrey University UK with the help of microbiologist Dr. Simon Park. When displayed in 2010, this will be an outdoor video installation of Ophelia with poems submitted from the public. Composer Milton Mermikides will be producing a sound track based on the genetic code of bacteria that colonize the gut. (source)

Niall Hamilton, microbiologist and bacterial artist extraordinaire, let me know about Microbial Art, a new website that gathers together everything from spare E. coli sketches to this somewhat surreal multimedia project from JoWOnder. Definitely an excellent way to pass the time while waiting for your cultures to inoculate. Thanks Niall!

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"Google had never done anything in the Amazon before, but it made perfect sense"*

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:17:39 -0500

*That's the Amazon rainforest - not Amazon.com!

Check out this interview from MAKE with Google's Rebecca Moore, who helped an Amazon chief use Google Earth to fight illegal logging.

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Dia de los Muertos + Boston = Skeletal Teddy Kennedy

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:17:48 -0500

One of the coolest, weirdest, worlds-colliding Day of the Dead artworks I've ever seen is this sculpture of a skeletal Teddy Kennedy. He's at a podium, open-jawed (no doubt haranguing other late Senators), accompanied by a skeletal dog.

The paper in his hand says "Health Care: The Cause of My Life." I realize this is a terrible photo, but in person, I actually found it pretty moving.

From the window of Nomad on Mass Ave in Cambridge, MA - they have an extensive Dia de los Muertos folk art collection.

Happy Halloween!

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Dear "Top Scientist": Here is a Rocket. You Put In Other Details

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:01:58 -0500

From the wonderful blog Letters of Note: in 1957, schoolboy Denis Cox generously shared his rocket blueprints with "A Top Scientist" at Australia's Woomera Weapons Research Establishment.

The important stuff (Rolls Royce jet engines, "Air Torpeados") is all there, although Denis explicitly gave the Top Scientists his permission to "put in other details" themselves, no doubt due to the lack of space for more detailed blueprints on his lined notebook paper ("I have discovered a truly marvelous proof, which this margin is too narrow to contain. . . ") Denis says modestly, "I thought it would be more effective than me trying to put the details in. I could have attempted some detail but I thought people at Woomera, particularly top scientists rather than just scientists, would be more aware of what the detail should be."

It's a bit late, but Denis is finally getting his answer:

The Defence Science Technology Organisation is now finally organising a letter from rocket scientists in response to the letter. Who knows, maybe on the strength of the rocket design, he will be offered a job. Or maybe he'll just receive a pleasant thank you note.

After 52 years, he thinks either one would suffice.

My money's not on the job, Denis. :)

See also this post and this cute little interview with Denis Cox, in which he reminisces about the days before TV, when his family went around shooting rabbits.

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