Art and Science in India November 12, 2009

Another Reason, by Gyan Frakash

From the Science Blog The Primate Diaries:

As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote of his native land but as a stranger in the process of discovery, “India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by invisible threads.” These invisible threads were the spiritual beliefs of the people, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita and the Manu Smriti. The sacred Ganges was a symbol of India’s life blood, as much for the Indian people as for the British colonialists, that, as Rudyard Kipling described in his story “The Bridge Builders,” was a natural force that needed to be conquered if the British were to successfully impose their hegemony. In this way “Mother Gunga–in irons” became a metaphor for the use of Western science in conquered lands. Princeton historian Gyan Prakash, in his survey of science in colonial India, seeks to show that science was both a means of expanding British control over the region and was a conflict zone that the nationalist elite of India sought to reimagine as an indigenous concept in order to reclaim their land.

Another Reason, as Prakash describes it, is a story of “science’s cultural authority as the legitimating sign of rationality and progress” (7). The colonial state used European science to conquer and exploit India and Prakash reveals how the history of science and the history of Western hegemony are akin to the two snakes intertwined around Hermes’ Caduceus, a symbol of reason and authority that seeks to heal but also to control. This can be seen in the early anthropological studies incorporated as part of the 1869 General Industrial Exhibition that sought to celebrate Western science in conquered lands. George Campbell, ethnologist and governor of Bengal, emphasized the importance of studying the “wild tribes” of the land under his purview because “Of all sciences, the neglected study of man is now recognized as the most important.” The racial politics were very clear, as Campbell explained.

“The world is becoming more and more one great country; race meets race, black with white, the Arian with Turanian and the Negro; and questions of miscegenation or separation are very pressing” (28).

Read the whole original post

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

Pretty medical imaging October 8, 2009

From Brainbows to dyed cells, all the prettiest images created with the aid of the human body (or someone’s body).

different brainbows

Follow the link to see the slideshow from Discover Magazine

If you’re interested in these images from a more scientific standpoint, go check out some different Journals that specialize in biomedical imaging:

Journal of Biomedical Optics
BMC Medical Imaging
Journal of Radiology

What else? Leave more in the comments, and I’ll insert them into this post.

Twilight Zone turns 50 October 7, 2009

Copyright CBS, Inc.

You are now entering the Twilight Zone of cinema and science!

On October 2, 1959, the first episode aired of what would turn out to be a seminal work of science-fiction television. For the first time the famous four-note musical motif played, and for the first time Rod Serling told viewers that they were “entering a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind.” Yes, it may be hard to believe, but October marks the fiftieth anniversary of the premiere of The Twilight Zone.

The first episode, titled “Where Is Everybody?” and starring Earl Holliman, was written by Serling and very much set the tone for the series: Holliman plays a man, dressed in an Air Force jumpsuit, who wanders about a town that seems to have no other people in it, though has evidence of very recent habitation (food on the stove, burning cigarettes in ashtrays, etc.). It turns out (SPOILER ALERT) that he is imagining the whole thing, and that he’s actually been put in isolation to see if he can stay sane for a trip to the moon.

Imaging molecules October 5, 2009

This isn’t so much about the art behind imaging molecules (although it is kind of pretty) but more about the technology behind the camera that took the image. This is actually an older story, and I’ve been debating whether it’s Art of Science worthy, but frankly, it’s just amazing that we’re finally able to image something as small as a molecule, so it’s in based solely on coolness.

From BBC News:

The detailed chemical structure of a single molecule has been imaged for the first time, say researchers.

The physical shape of single carbon nanotubes has been outlined before, using similar techniques – but the new method even shows up chemical bonds.

Understanding structure on this scale could help in the design of many things on the molecular scale, particularly electronics or even drugs.

The IBM researchers reported their findings in the journal Science in August of this year.

It is the same group that in July reported the feat of measuring the charge on a single atom.

In both cases, a team from IBM Research Zurich used what is known as an atomic force microscope or AFM.

Their version of the device acts like a tiny tuning fork, with one of the prongs of the fork passing incredibly close to the sample and the other farther away.

When the fork is set vibrating, the prong nearest the sample will experience a minuscule shift in the frequency of its vibration, simply because it is getting close to the molecule.

Comparing the frequencies of the two prongs gives a measure of just how close the nearer prong is, effectively mapping out the molecule’s structure.

Free Museum Day tomorrow September 25, 2009

September 26th is Annual Museum Day, and lots of museums and parks are offering free admission in celebration. Read on for more:

On Sept. 26, as part of the fifth annual Museum Day program, Smithsonian magazine has convinced more than 1,200 other museums, zoos, and arts and cultural attractions across the country to also welcome visitors for free.

In California, you’ll can use your Museum Day admission card to visit the classic cars displayed at the California Automobile Museum in Sacramento (regular adult admission: $8), in New York City you can use your pass at the South Street Seaport Museum (regular adult admission: $10), and in Dallas, your pass will get you into the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza (regular admission: $13.50), which explores the assassination and legacy of President John F. Kennedy. 

To see the full list of all the participating museums so you can plan your day, visit the Smithsonian’s Museum Day 2009 Web site and poke around. Be ready to be a bit overwhelmed.

Waterless dye September 18, 2009

Science makes an appearance at Fashion Week this week (on Disco Blog):

This year, it’s fabric dye that’s getting the Green treatment. Coloring a pound of fabric can take up to 75 gallons of water, and a single dress or pair of pants can use up to 25 gallons.

So what if we could dye all our clothes without water? That was the idea tackled by Colorep, a California-based technology development company that created a new way to color fabric using air rather than H2O. Called AirDye, the process applies non-plastisol-based inks within garment fibers, rather than as a layer on top (which is how it’s done with water).

This Fashion Week, the AirDye system made its debut at the Costello Tagliapietra show, in which the clothes (see photo) were dyed almost entirely without water.

Eco-dye

*Editor’s Note*:I still don’t understand why it’s fashionable to make your hair look like a rat’s nest.

Dissected knit frog! September 9, 2009

One of many cool knitted specimens of science.

What happens when science nerds get hold of knitting needles and crochet hooks? Marvelous, wonderful things, that’s what! Here is a sampling of discovery magazine’s favorite knitted and crocheted science creations.

This gallery includes Daina Taimina’s geometric forms that inspired the crocheted coral reef that have put the Institute for Figuring on the map (relatively).

A cute little dissected knit frog

   See the whole gallery, including a colored 3D diagram of the brain!

Legos help nanotechnology August 31, 2009

*Editor’s note*: I admit this isn’t high art, but it shows just how useful playing, creativity, and having at least a little bit of artistic flair can be in solving some of life’s big mysteries. Okay, on with the article completely reposted from Physorg:

A tiny white ball is release into a Lego board with peg pieces, immersed in a tank filled with glycerol to help researchers visualize what happens at nanoscale in microfluidic arrays. Credit: Will Kirk/JHU

Johns Hopkins engineers are using a popular children’s toy to visualize the behavior of particles, cells and molecules in environments too small to see with the naked eye. These researchers are arranging little LEGO pieces shaped like pegs to re-create microscopic activity taking place inside lab-on-a-chip devices at a scale they can more easily observe.

These lab-on-a-chip devices, also known as microfluidic arrays, are commonly used to sort tiny samples by size, shape or composition, but the minuscule forces at work at such a small magnitude are difficult to measure. To solve this small problem, the Johns Hopkins engineers decided to think big.

Led by Joelle Frechette and German Drazer, both assistant professors of chemical and biomolecular engineering in the university’s Whiting School of Engineering, the team used beads just a few millimeters in diameter, an aquarium filled with goopy glycerol and the LEGO pieces arranged on a LEGO board to unlock mysteries occurring at the micro- or nanoscale level. Their observations could offer clues on how to improve the design and fabrication of lab-on-a-chip technology. Their study concerning this technique was published in the Aug. 14 issue of Physical Review Letters.

The idea for this project comes from the concept of “dimensional analysis,” in which a process is studied at a different size and time scale while keeping the governing principles the same.

“Microfluidic arrays are like miniature chemical plants,” Frechette says. “One of the key components of these devices is the ability to separate one type of constituent from another. We investigated a microfluidic separation method that we suspected would remain the same when you scale it up from micrometers or nanometers to something as large as the size of billiard balls.”

With this goal in mind, Frechette and Drazer constructed an array using cylindrical LEGO pegs stacked two high and arranged in rows and columns on a LEGO board to create a lattice of obstacles. The board was attached to a Plexiglas sheet to improve its stiffness and pressed up against one wall of a Plexiglas tank filled with glycerol. Stainless steel balls of three different sizes, as well as plastic balls, were manually released from the top of the array; their paths to the bottom were tracked and timed with a camera.

Bug glaze and other ancient pigments August 31, 2009

Egyptian leather

The August 10th Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences was filled with science and art discoveries.

Marco Leona of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was able to analyze the color of a fragment of leather from an ancient Egyptian quiver. The discovery that the color was madder, a red dye, is the earliest evidence for the complex chemical knowledge needed to extract the dye from a plant and turn it into a pigment, Leona reports. This means that four thousand years ago Egyptians had already mastered the process of making madder.

The find is some 700 years earlier than any previously known use of madder, which became highly popular in the Middle Ages and provides many of the red shades and glazes in the work of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer.

“Tracing the use of organic colorants offers a way to follow trade routes, identify relations among archaeological objects, detect forgeries and attribute works of art,” Leona wrote.

Leona refined a technique called Raman spectroscopy, which relies on the scattering of light to study materials. That process is not generally suitable for studying madder or some other dyes, but Leona enhanced the result using tiny metal particles that could amplify the findings and detect even very low levels of chemicals.

In addition to tracing madder, he was able to identify as kermes the red in the painting “St. John the Baptist Bearing Witness,” from the workshop of Francesco Granacci in the early 1500s in Florence, Italy. Kermes was a dye made from the bodies of insects and was common in Europe before the importation of cochineal from the New World.

And the red color in the Morgan Madonna, dated at between 1150 and 1210, turned out to be based on lac dye, which originated in Asia and may have been imported to southern Europe by Muslim traders.

This is the first documented example of lac dye in European art before the 15th century, according to Leona. He noted that this sculpture was originally housed in the French region Auvergne, which borders Provence, where commercial records from a few decades later record importation of lac. The French artist who created this wooden sculpture may have been one of the first Europeans to use Lac, an insect-derived pigment.

Art historians knew that the dark red dye, extracted from a resin that the tiny lac insect (Kerria lacca) secretes onto trees to protect itself, was popular in 15th-century Renaissance art, but the Morgan Madonna pre-dates those pieces by about 3 centuries. Leona identified the dye from a 25-micron-wide glaze sample about half the thickness of a human hair. Art historians believe that Lac may have arrived in Europe from India through North African traders.