Yes, the human biological kind of organs.
Intricate wax models of humans – and their internal organs – helped educate medical students during the 19th Century. But they also offered the general public an unusual afternoon’s entertainment.
As the Wellcome Collection in central London tells the curious and grotesque story of the anatomical model – take a tour with curator Kate Forde.
From Scientific American:
Stomach growling, but have no time for a meal? A snack will do. Drowsy and unable to concentrate? A short nap can be reviving when a good night’s rest is unavailable. But what should you do when you are alone and feeling lonely?
New psychological research suggests that loneliness can be alleviated by simply turning on your favorite TV show. In the same way that a snack can satiate hunger in lieu of a meal, it seems that watching favorite TV shows can provide the experience of belonging without a true interpersonal interaction.
For decades, psychologists have been interested in understanding how individuals achieve and maintain social relationships in order to ward off social isolation and loneliness. The vast majority of this research has focused on relationships between real individuals interacting face-to-face. Recent research has widened this focus from real relationships to faux, “parasocial” relationships. Parasocial relationships are the kind of one sided pseudo-relationships we develop over time with people or characters we might see on TV or in the movies. So, just as a friendship evolves through spending time together and sharing personal thoughts and opinions, parasocial relationships evolve by watching characters on our favorite TV shows, and becoming involved with their personal lives, idiosyncrasies, and experiences as if they were those of a friend.
In a recent article published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Jaye Derrick and Shira Gabriel of the University of Buffalo and Kurt Hugenberg of Miami University test what they call the “Social Surrogacy Hypothesis.”
I had never heard of the series Nerdabout on the Science Channel until yesterday, but pretty cool stuff.
This video in particular, featuring Kate Hartman of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU (she considers her first job an artist) and her work with wearable electronics, fits well with this blog’s subject matter. One of the first things she shows off is a sweatshirt that starts to vibrate when it connects with itself, or another similarly decked-out sweatshirt…specifically in the spots where people touch when they hug each other, or themselves.
Kate also has stuff on Instructables.
3D films are starting to make a return into theaters. What is different now than the first binge of 3D films in the 1950s (other than the audience)?
This year is seeing a comeback for 3D cinema, with every major film studio releasing a title in the format.
Even the Cannes Film Festival showed its support to the industry by allowing a 3D feature to open the event for the first time.
The film selected was Disney and Pixar’s latest release called Up, which is just one of 15 movies in 3D coming out in 2009.
It is the story of a widower who ties a thousand balloons to his house and flies away on an adventure.
Other forthcoming releases cover genres from family friendly animations such as Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs to adult horror in My Bloody Valentine.
But the most anticipated 3D release is due at the end of the year from Titanic director James Cameron.
Avatar is expected to be the most expensive movie ever made – Cameron has spent much of the past decade researching and experimenting with the technique.
“You can look at a 2D version of a 3D film and see all the dumb gags that were fun in 3D but look stupid in 2D.
“Before we spent hundreds of millions of dollars making a movie, we had to say is this movie going to be in any way compromised in its 2D presentation. Because the reality is that in the short-tem DVDs are still going to be in 2D.
Hollywood is starting to catch up now that the technology is finally right for a third era of 3D.
Read how 3D CINEMA WORKS and watch the 2D news reel.
From LiveScience:
Any avid reader knows the power of a book to transport you into another world, be it the wizard realm of “Harry Potter” or the legal intrigue of the latest John Grisham.
Part of the reason we get lost in these imaginary worlds might be because our brains effectively simulate the events of the book in the same way they process events in the real world, a new study suggests.
The new study, detailed in the July 21 issue of the journal Psychological Science, builds on previous work that links the way our brains process images and written words to the way they process actions we perform ourselves.
Examining these links could shed light on why some people enjoy reading more than others and how our reading abilities change with time. Essentially, some people might paint a more vivid mental picture of written prose than others.
Understanding how our brains process the events and changes while reading could help us understand some of the individual differences in reading, for example, why some people are sucked in by stories more than others.
While some readers can actually picture what they read, may not.
“There are readers, competent readers, who say ‘I have no pictures in my head when I read’,” says study author Jeffrey Zacks said.
TOMORROW! Thursday 30th July 2009: 17:00-21:00
MEMBERS ONLY SNEAK PREVIEW: BUBBLE: DON’T BURST IT
(Sorry, dudes and dudettes, only in Dublin, Ireland)
Pop in and be the first to experience BUBBLE at Science Gallery – an interactive exhibition promising fizz, froth and foam. Enter the iridescent and magical world of bubbles. BUBBLE is an exploration of the physics of foams and bubbles, developed in collaboration with leading physicists Denis Weaire and Stefan Hutzler, of Trinity College Dublin.
Be the first to test out the LATHER LAB, experience the sounds of SOAPER SONICS, explore photography, installations and loads of BUBBLES.
This preview will be fun for all the family, free and by ticket only.
To reserve your free ticket please click go to
http://www.sciencegallery.com/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=1325&qid=128843
BUBBLE will open to the public on Friday 31st July at midday and runs in the Science Gallery until September 25th.
BUBBLE at Science Gallery is supported by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism.
Still crunch time for me…
But, Wired Science has been posting some great photos of galaxies, stars, and other celestial bodies, so I figured I’d fill my web page with lots of those.
Enjoy!
First Up: Eye-shaped galaxy.
with black hole iris
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope delivered this crazy looking eye-shaped galaxy image.
The iris of the eye is actually a ring of stars surrounding the area around an enormous, invisible black hole that is around 100 million times the mass of the sun and far larger than our galaxy’s central black hole. The stars show up white and the space around the black hole is blue in this color-coded infrared image.
“The ring itself is a fascinating object worthy of study because it is forming stars at a very high rate,” Kartik Sheth, an astronomer at NASA’s Spitzer Science Center, said in a press release.
In infrared light, shorter wavelengths look blue, and longer wavelengths appear red. Astronomers think the smaller blue galaxy peeking through the spiral arms may have actually punched a hole in the larger galaxy.
Next: A silhouette of the docked space shuttle at the space station against a full sun.
A French photographer has captured a stunning photo of the space shuttle Endeavor docked with the International Space Station crossing the face of the sun. You couldn’t just aim your digital camera at the sky and get results like this. Thierry Legault, who is known for his amazing astronomical imagery, uses specialized solar filters to capture the images.
Finally: Stellar Explosion! X-Ray Telescope’s First 10 Years of Awesome Images
Ten years ago this month, NASA launched the Chandra X-Ray Observatory aboard the space shuttle Columbia. And it has provided stunning images from the high-energy side of the electromagnetic spectrum ever since.
Things have gone so well that the the Chandra team gave themselves a well-deserved pat on the back.
“Chandra’s discoveries are truly astonishing and have made dramatic changes to our understanding of the universe and its constituents,” Martin Weisskopf, Chandra project scientist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said in a press release.
NASA created a list of Chandra’s top 10 scientific discoveries, but we’re suckers for the pretty pictures it produces of supernova remnants and pulsar jets and the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. We’ve entered a selection of Chandra images into the Reddit widget for you to vote on — or you can add your own.
This is NOT a slow news day; this is me being super swamped at work and not having time to read any news.
As a small token of appreciation for your patience, please enjoy this interview with microsculptor Willard Wigan on NPR. He is definitely dedicated to his art, even if there is the threat of accidentally breathing it in.
Wigan “makes sculptures so small, that they’re barely visible to the naked eye. His art has to be viewed through a microscope – that’s why he calls himself a micro-sculptor. Willard Wigan has put Elvis Presley on the head of a pin. He’s perched Marilyn Monroe on top of a diamond. And this year he squeezed the Obama family into the eye of a sewing needle.”
My favorite part of the story is actually what inspired his micro-career: building little apartments for lost ants. Awwww…and how awesome that a love of nature inspired such (micro) art.
Willard was asked to appear as a guest speaker at the July 2009 world conference Technology, Entertainment, Design institute, (www.ted.com).
Those Japanese robots lead busy lives. First working as a secretary, then a school teacher, and how a bridal fashion model!
Designer Yumi Katsura used the humanoid robot Miim to model a wedding dress from her latest Paris collection. HRP-4C, or “Miim” for short, told a stunned audience she was very happy to be wearing the wedding dress.
YouTube video from the show:
HRP-4C going to the chapel
The art and technology behind aerial stunts is celebrated this coming Monday with the largest gathering of airplanes in the world:
Only a handful of events can pull off the single name thing and get away with it. Indy. LeMans. Daytona. Their aviation equivalent is Oshkosh. Mention the word to pilots and aviation buffs, and they’ll know you’re not talking about the overalls you wore as a kid.
Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is the site of the annual AirVenture aviation show, the largest gathering of aircraft and aircraft fanatics in the world. It’s where the past meets the present and everyone glimpses the future, as some 10,000 aircraft take to the air beginning Monday.
“If it has flown, is flying or will fly, it will show up at Oshkosh,” Dick Knapinski, a spokesman for the Experimental Aircraft Association, told Wired.com. The EAA has been hosting the annual show since the first gathering in Milwaukee 56 years ago.
It’s an exciting time for the aviation sector, a feeling that will be reflected in Oshkosh as more than half a million people look to the future. Electric airplanes, flying cars and even a jet pack or two will share the tarmac with a replica of the Wright Brothers flyer, World War II–era warplanes and the massive Airbus A380 jumbo jet.
For one week in July, the air traffic control tower at Wittman Regional Airport is the busiest in the world.
The show draws participants and spectators from 65 countries who come to to see the latest innovations in aviation. This year the buzz, to steal a pun from the automotive world, is about electric airplanes. As we reported earlier this week, electric aircraft are the focus of tremendous development effort around the world right now. Advocates of electric aircraft say the rechargeable planes address concerns over rising fuel costs, CO2 emissions and the noise complaints that often plague pilots.
“Years from now, if we want to have the freedom to fly, we’ll have to remove all social barriers,” Tom Peghiny told Wired.com. “Whether that’s air pollution, noise pollution, bothering other people, we’re going to have to remove those barriers in order to keep our freedom to fly.”
