New from Made with Molecules artist Raven Hanna, creator of the serotonin necklace: protein jewelry! This is incredibly clever, because the single-letter protein code is a language most biologists speak. You stand a pretty good chance of running into a fellow bio geek who’ll be able to decipher your signals. The above bracelet is the perfect example: if you can read it, you are one!
But the best part - why I love Raven’s work - is that non-geeks will have no clue. The silver shapes are elegant and simple enough to pass as abstract art. After coveting her serotonin necklace for several months, I finally bought one, and I’m so glad I did. It’s much lovelier in person than on her site, and I received a lot of compliments on it - even though most people weren’t quite sure what it was (the neurobiologists knew, the chemists got the general chemical class, and the physicists said, “is that a molecule?”)
Bay Area residents can see Raven’s work in person on Friday October 5 at Feria Urbana in Oakland, or check out her etsy shop.
Kiri-origami artist Taketori cuts and folds paper to make realistic-looking insects. Each critter is crafted from a single sheet, without glue, and paint is often used to add to the realism.
The artist, like God, seems inordinately fond of beetles.
More here. Taketori’s homepage (cheesy midi music warning)
My excursion in honor of the first ever International Rock-Flipping Day (IRFD), September 2, was disappointing. I was full of hope, given the cicada-filled trees outside my apartment and the bizarre insectoid life I’ve already encountered in the few weeks I’ve been in Washington, DC. But in increasing frustration, I flipped no less than three rocks in the well-watered garden outside my apartment complex, then two more rocks in the dryish park - in desperation, I even flipped a derelict toaster oven!
The only animal I found under any of these objects was one incredibly common pillbug. And I couldn’t even get a decent photo of it before it ran away.
I suppose it could have been worse. After all, the unpretentious, unpoisonous, friendly pillbug is the semi-official mascot of IRFD, depicted on the snazzy badge created by Jason at cephalopodcast:
I’ve always loved pillbugs - the glossier and rounder, the better. (I have much less affection for their cousins the sowbugs, because they cannot roll themselves into perfect little balls). Pillbugs were also the occasion for the first great biological discovery of my life. During my childhood rock-flipping phase, I encountered a pillbug brooding its offspring (ghostly white, pin-head-sized versions of their parent). I was mystified; I thought insects simply laid eggs and left them without the slightest regard. So I looked up pillbugs (actually I probably looked up “roly-polies,” because that’s what we called them) and learned they aren’t insects (hexapods) at all. They’re crustaceans. Isopods like sowbugs and pillbugs are closer relations to lobsters and shrimp - even to barnacles - than to anything you’d usually find in your garden, including the very similar millipedes (myriapods). The astonishment of that taxonomic discovery has never left me, and probably went a long way to making me a biologist.
But the wonder doesn’t stop there. As we all know by now, the ocean harbors giant versions of nearly everything - including pillbugs! I wouldn’t care to run into the giant isopod, Bathynomus giganteus:
Why are giant isopods so darn big? I have no clue, but Deep-Sea News took a good try at the question. (You might also ask why terrestrial arthropods are not larger; a recent paper in PNAS identified the oxygen-delivering tracheal system as the limiting factor for certain species of beetle).
Today I was a little disappointed that there were no hexapods or myriapods or arachnids to be seen - not even under the toaster oven. But walking dejectedly back to the apartment with my empty camera, I saw a doe and her still-dappled fawn - definitely too large to have squeezed out from under a rock, but enough to satisfy my frustrated biophilia. Perhaps next year’s IRFD will give more conventional results (mark your calendar now).
In the meantime, check out everyone else’s experiences here: most had much better luck than I did!
Last night while drinking some water, I noticed that two ice cubes had fused, forming a complex that resembled an X chromosome in metaphase: two chromatids joined by a wee little centromere! I realized at that point that I really am a big science dork. But I thought it was pretty enough to share anyway.
I think that’s probably a Y cubosome off to the left, with its chromatids stretched end-to-end. Why my glass of water has only sex cubosomes and no autosomes, I have no idea. The analogy breaks down, ok?
Y and X chromosomes: copyright Indigo Instruments
PS. My water glass photo kind of resembles the Rosalind Franklin art I posted about earlier, doesn’t it? Huh.
Wait - I don’t believe that a Shmoo even HAS a skeleton. Isn’t it entirely cytoplasmic? Or am I thinking of yeast?
I do like the little vestigial arms - kind of like the rudimentary, internal “hindlimbs” of whales and pythons. How did the Shmoo evolve, anyway? Did the proto-shmoo have opposable thumbs? How could evolution possibly select for the bizarrely self-destructive altruism of a Shmoo?
Uh oh. This is not a productive line of thought. Stopping now.
This is a good idea, but in practice it isn’t terribly accurate. The idea is to tell you whether the area in which you live is walker-friendly – how many stores, restaurants, bars, etc. are close to you? Unfortunately, Google’s database, the basis of the Walkscore algorithm, seems deficient. I live amidst a veritable explosion of eateries here in DC - plus, I’m within easy walking distance of the National Zoo. Lions and tigers! Pandas and elephants! A flippin’ baby giant anteater! That’s gotta be a triple walk score right there. Yet my score is only 82/100 - a B. Why?
So then I looked at the sleepy town where I used to live. My old house had a score of 60. WHAT? There was nothing to do there! That’s why I left!
A quick check of the destinations listed explained it all. I used to live very close to, yet inexplicably did not visit, the Young Marines, Municipal Building Maintenance, Municipal Park Maintenance, the Department of Fisheries, several long-defunct libraries and cafes, a catering establishment, and eight schools. And then there’s the slight problem of the RIVER between my house and half the proposed destinations. It’s hard to carry groceries while snorkeling. (These are all known issues with Walkscore.)
No algorithm is perfect, but Walkscore will not tell you if you live in a “good” neighborhood. Only visiting can tell you that. And I’m going to go visit the giant baby anteater.
Square A is exactly the same color as square B. No kidding.
Our visual systems are old pros at tricking our consciousness. What’s going on here is a simple case of lightness constancy: our visual system is designed to feed us not merely raw data, but a useful interpretation of what we see. This process is what allows the pages of a book to appear “white” in both bright sunlight and leafy shade, despite the change in the amount of light reflected from the pages.
For an explanation of this illusion, created about ten years ago by Edward H. Adelson, refer to this page at MIT. The illusion also has its own Wikipedia page. Adelson’s Lightness Perception and Lightness Illusions (Chapter 24 from M. Gazzaniga’s The New Cognitive Neurosciences) is a fairly technical treatment of lightness constancy. Meredith Talusan and Janice Chen have created Flash animations of the illusions in Adelson’s chapter, so if you don’t particularly care about Metelli’s episcotister model, you can go straight to the pretty pictures.
I’ve seen this principle illustrated before, but can usually force my brain to accept “reality.” On this one, I just couldn’t make myself accept that the squares are the same color, until I took off my glasses. When the sharp grid of the checkerboard and the letters “A” and “B” are too blurry to be visible, suddenly the two squares do appear the same color! Try taking off your glasses (and/or squinting to distort your vision) and see if it works for you, too.
Thanks to Parseval for suggesting this checkerboard illusion in a comment.
Ok, this is just plain bizarre. It’s a row of faux books that, when activated by a motion sensor, move, mutter unintelligibly, and howl with electronic feedback. I laughed at the video. And I love that the book which jumps out at the victim is Silas Marner. I really would be terrified if I had to read that book again. But aren’t there more sensible choices for a haunted book, like The Turn of the Screw, or Rebecca?
I woke up yesterday in Idaho, today I’m in Seattle, and in a few hours I fly to London. Woohoo. I’m somewhat sleep deprived and I still have to pack my bags, so I’m going to drop this link and run. Let’s just say I will never read the phrase “the birds and the bees” in quite the same way again!
Lust Erotic Boutique, Copenhagen (Illustrations by Johannes Bojesen, for Grey Kobenhavn)
I was in the subway yesterday when the repeating pattern of concrete blocks started messing with my head. I did a little research later, but couldn’t find anything about the illusion I experienced (probably because I can’t describe it well enough to Google it).
So I’ll just pass on this link from Dark Roasted Blend, collecting some of the best visual illusions out there. You’ve probably seen a few of them, like the rotating snakes, but I doubt you’ve seen all of them. (My favorites are the ladybugs and the spinning dancer.)
Peacay just let me know about this cool article in Cabinet Magazine, written by Jeffrey Kastner.
The aquatic caddisfly constructs a shell-like “case” for itself out of debris in its environment. For years, artist Herbert Duprat has been supplying his caddisfly corps with top-grade building materials, and they’ve produced “art” like this:
Is the caddis worm’s precious case the work of the insect or the work of the artist? This is not the right question. The contradiction can be resolved by the differing viewpoints. According to the first view, the caddis worm owed nothing to the artist (who is simply the author of one noise among the thousands of other noises in its environment). According to the second view, the caddis worm is merely the executor of the artist’s project. The artistic statement plays on the confusion of the two levels by overlaying the two perspectives. (Christian Besson, quoted by Jeffrey Kastner in Cabinet; Besson’s extended interview with Duprat in this article from Leonardo)
There’s even a video of a caddisfly case in progress, with the larva perched like Smaug on a huge heap of gold and pearls, scrabbling and gluing away.
I used to collect caddisfly larvae in streams, although I hadn’t thought about them in years. I think the mica-faceted blue-grey caddis-houses of the Pacific Northwest are every bit as beautiful as these baroque arthopod Versailleses. Still, it’s a cool idea - and far better than roach-brooches! (Those overhyped roaches don’t even do the decoration themselves. Pshaw.)
