DIY haunted house October 30, 2009

Skull #11 ('80s Metal), 2006. by Brian Dettmer. Photo: Andrew Huff via Flickr.

It’s not too late to get in the Halloween spirit!

Halloween is almost here (tomorrow), so it’s time to get your haunted house in gear. We’ve got some suggestions for freaking out the kids (and adults) in your neighborhood in our collection of articles below.

And remember, if you have extra tips for some gruesome, ghoulish mischief, log in and share your knowledge by contributing to the Wired wiki (or here on this blog in the comments).

Choose from the following options of frighteningly easy DIY (ha-ha, had to get a bad Halloween joke in there):

1 Make Fake Blood

2 Make Fake Smoke

3 Build a Giant Spider Web

4 Download Some Freaky Sounds

More at Wired

Biotech Performance Festival October 30, 2009

Albany, NY – The unique intersection of the worlds of art and science – including the impact of ever-evolving technologies on the emerging definition of humanity – will take center stage during the first-ever Biotech Performance Festival presented jointly by the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (“CNSE”) and UAlbany’s Department of Theatre.

The performances, to be held October 30 through November 7 at UAlbany’s Performing Arts Center, will transform the theatrical stage into a laboratory and the role of a playwright into that of a researcher, courtesy of a 90-minute evening of plays that explore how technology is redrawing what constitutes the living and the mechanical, the generated and the engineered, the synthetic and the natural.

The theatrical stage offers a unique opportunity to raise a community’s awareness and understanding of the issues that surround the cutting-edge research that defines the 21^st century technological revolution. Five plays to be offered at each performance provide an outlet for a theatrical response to a world in which our perceptions of nature and culture have been greatly affected by new technologies – and provide a platform to investigate the technological revolution in our classrooms and communities.

Featured playwrights at the festival include Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy, executive director of the New York State Writers Institute at UAlbany, and Jackie Roberts, assistant professor of theatre at UAlbany and curator of the Biotech Performance Festival.

University at Albany President George M. Philip said, “This cross-campus, interdisciplinary collaboration combines the groundbreaking education and research of the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering with the distinctive artistic expression of the Department of Theatre.  I applaud this exciting partnership and look forward to a performance that will be equal parts enlightening, educational and entertaining.”

CNSE Senior Vice President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Alain E. Kaloyeros said, “The UAlbany NanoCollege is delighted to partner with the Department of Theatre to present the first-ever Biotech Performance Festival, which offers an exciting opportunity to explore the educational, cultural and societal impacts of the scientific revolution being driven by nanotechnology. As the 21^st century is increasingly shaped by the emergence of new and transformative technologies, this pioneering effort will promote further understanding of the growing connection between modern-day innovation and our humanity.”

Roberts said, “We are thrilled to present the Biotech Performance Festival in partnership with the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, which truly exemplifies the exciting world of modern-day scientific discovery and exploration. The collision of science with the performing arts gives us a chance to raise issues, promote dialogue and offer a bold perspective on our world as it is shaped by the emergence of new technologies. It should prove to be a unique and wonderful experience.”

Kennedy said, “The technology that is abroad in the land these days, and which is shaping a new reality for everybody, is indeed a wonder to many.  But it is also a grand mystification for just as many.  The Biotech Performance Festival opens up windows on how a few of these disparities might collide, how some people cope with them (or don’t) and what we might learn from the collision.”

In his play In the System, Kennedy tells the story of two small-time gamblers who embrace technology to make a killing at the racetrack. Roberts’ A Tale for Children is a modern-day mermaid story with a genetic twist. Other featured plays include It’s a Small, Small World by Alice Kauffman, in which a 15-year-old boy teaches his mother about nanotechnology; Stained Glass by Lindsay Price, which recounts the first human trial of a breakthrough cancer treatment; and the apocalyptic tale spawned by a mad scientist in The Second Coming by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro.

Performances are scheduled for Friday and Saturday, October 30 and 31 at 8 pm; Sunday, November 1 at 2 pm; Wednesday-Friday, November 4-6 at 8 pm; and Saturday, November 7 at 2 pm. For more information, please visit http://www.albany.edu/theatre/biotechfestival.html.

Hubble spots jewel box star cluster October 29, 2009

 

From Wired Science:

This stunning image of the Kappis Crucis Cluster, nicknamed the “Jewel Box,” was one of the last gifts from a retiring camera on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Just before NASA brought the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 back to Earth in mid-2009, it snapped this photo of the core of the NGC 4755 star cluster, the first comprehensive image of an open galactic cluster taken in multiple wavelengths. Using seven different filters, Hubble captured the Jewel Box cluster in far ultraviolet to near-infrared light. The different colors of the stars — from pale blue to bright ruby red — result from their differing intensities at various ultraviolet wavelengths.

Just bright enough to be seen from Earth with the naked eye, the Jewel Box was given its name by English astronomer John Herschel in the 1830’s, who thought the sparkling blue and red stars resembled expensive jewelry. Like most open star clusters, the Jewel Box is made up of an array of sister stars, all formed from the same cloud of gas and dust with similar ages and chemical make-up. Located about 6,400 light-years away, near the Southern Cross in the constellation of Crux, the Jewel Box contains roughly 100 stars.

Besides Hubble, two other telescopes have also recently captured new images of the Jewel Box. A wide-field photo taken by the 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla observatory in Chile shows the multi-colored cluster surrounded by thousands of neighboring stars. A close-up from ESO’s Very Large Telescope captures the stars in detail and ranks as one of the best images of the Jewel Box ever taken from the ground. Both images can be seen in the composite photo below.

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Image 1: NASA/ESA and Jesús Maíz Apellániz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain. Image 2: ESO, NASA/ESA, Digitized Sky Survey 2 and Jesús Maíz Apellániz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain.

October 28, 2009

I just wanted to apologize for my sudden disappearance. I have returned and the blog should be back up and running soon.

Thanks for your patience.

-The Scientiste

Fashion on your iphone October 16, 2009

From Reuters: Designer Roland Mouret and blogger The Sartorialist weigh in on new media’s effect on fast fashion, including buying fashion from your phone.

Video ensues.

Making the stairs fun October 16, 2009

An ad company is experimenting with ways to make exercise and “doing the right thing” fun! With art!

Maybe I’m a nerd, and even though this is being done by an ad agency, I just find this so inspiring – using technology to create interactive public art. Plus, it worked: putting sounds on the stairs (making the stairs fun) made 66% more people take the stairs!

3-D printed glass melds art, science October 14, 2009

An object printed from powdered glass, using the Solheim Lab’s new Vitraglyphic process

U. WASHINGTON-SEATTLE—

A team of engineers and artists has developed a way to create glass objects using a conventional 3-D printer. The technique allows a new type of material to be used in such devices.

Named the Vitraglyphic process, the method is a follow-up to the Solheim Rapid Manufacturing Laboratory’s success last spring printing with ceramics.

“It became clear that if we could get a material into powder form at about 20 microns we could print just about anything,” says Mark Ganter, a University of Washington professor of mechanical engineering and codirector of the Solheim Lab. (Twenty microns is less than one thousandth of an inch.)

Three-dimensional printers are used as a cheap, fast way to build prototype parts. In a typical powder-based 3-D printing system, a thin layer of powder is spread over a platform and software directs an inkjet printer to deposit droplets of binder solution only where needed. The binder reacts with the powder to bind the particles together and create a 3-D object.

Glass powder doesn’t readily absorb liquid, however, so the approach used with ceramic printing had to be radically altered.

“Using our normal process to print objects produced gelatin-like parts when we used glass powders,” says mechanical engineering graduate student Grant Marchelli, who led the experimentation. “We had to reformulate our approach for both powder and binder.”

By adjusting the ratio of powder to liquid the team found a way to build solid parts out of powdered glass. Their successful formulation held together and fused when heated to the required temperature.

Read full article

Latest from Science Gallery October 14, 2009

I occasionally report on events happening at the Science Gallery housed in Dublin. Here’s a cool event which spans two continents, in a way:

15 Oct 09 at 18:30
UPDATE FROM SILICON VALLEY, by Joel Slayton
Paccar Theatre, Science Gallery

Joel Slayton, Executive Director of ZER01 (the art and technology network responsible for the ultra-hip art, technology and digital culture event- 01SJ Biennial), will discuss upcoming plans for the 3rd 01SJ Biennial in 2010 and tell the tale of his work with C5 Corporation – a 10 year collaborative initiative focused on blurring the boundaries of art, research and business practice.  http://www.c5corp.com/.  

Students free (must show student ID) €5 for non-students (10% off original price for members) | Pre-book on http://www.sciencegallery.com/events

In association with TRIARC (Trinity Irish Art Research Centre) and Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, TCD.

New farmhouse design using old methods October 13, 2009

From BBC News:

The farmhouse has been designed to blend in with its surroundings in the south of Scotland as much as possible

It is highly unusual for anyone to welcome being “fleeced” during the building of their new home.

Yet that is one key part of a green farmhouse scheme which has recently been approved in southern Scotland.

Among the elements which will make the Cairn Valley farmhouse near Moniaive “carbon neutral” is using the nearby sheep to help keep the humans warm.

Their wool will be used to provide insulation in a scheme which is proud of its eco-credentials.

Dumfriesshire farmer Neil Gourlay, 49, said the project had been a “lifelong dream”.

He said he was keen to do “something different” that would also be environmentally friendly.

One element he was particularly keen on was to use sheep’s wool as insulation rather than selling it for what he described as a “pittance”.

He admitted: “I’m a miserable Scotsman in some respects.

“We could do a lot more with reclaimed materials that are just as good as brand new.”

That means that wool sheared from his sheep will be used as insulation – a practice he hopes might catch on with other farmers.

That is not where the use of elements from the Dumfries and Galloway landscape ends.

Locally reclaimed timber is intended to form part of the farmhouse design.

Existing external dry stone walls will be extended to come into the building.

While the sloped roof to the main living area will be covered in turf and also feature a variety of low-growing plants.

Read on…

LCROSS Twitters “Hitchhiker” October 13, 2009

OMG So Cute! From The Guardian:

In one of its less-reported actions last week, Nasa’s LCROSS lunar mission last week gave Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the extra-planetary exposure it has always deserved. A Twitter feed from the satellite sent crashing onto the moon’s surface on Friday channelled the voice of an improbably created sperm whale that discovers itself hurtling towards a different outer-space collision in Adams’s much-loved story.

Published 30 years ago, the classic novel features two missiles, aimed at Zaphod Beeblebrox’s spaceship the Heart of Gold, turned into a whale and a bowl of petunias by the vessel’s Improbability Drive (at an Improbability Factor of 8,767,128 against). The whale spends the last few minutes of its life pondering its existence – “Ahhh! Woooh! What’s happening? Who am I? Why am I here? What’s my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I?” – before it crashes into the surface of the planet Magrathea.

As Nasa’s LCROSS spacecraft travelled towards the moon at more than 9,000 kilometres per hour on Friday afternoon, it tweeted in the whale’s words: “And what’s this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round … it needs a big wide sounding name like ‘Ow’, ‘Ownge’, ‘Round’, ‘Ground’! … That’s it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it’ll be friends with me?”

Then it crashed into the moon, unfortunately failing to produce the 10km plume of dust and rock which could have been scanned for evidence of frozen water. Nasa made no mention of Adams’s bowl of petunias, which thought only “Oh no, not again” as it tumbled towards Magrathea.

Read on…