Archive for Science
Visualization challenge winners teach science through art
Posted by: | CommentsA multicolored mouse eye, the macro-scale universe, alien slugs on the face of a baby cucumber — all these images accomplish a pretty impressive feat: They look awesome, and they can teach us something about the world we live in and our place in it. They are among the winners of the 2011 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation.
Illustration First Place – The Cosmic Void
At first glance, it looks like this could be a microscopic image of tree bark or seashell; or it might be a cluster of blood cells in the body. But this evocative image depicts the grandest scales of all — streams of matter delineating the network of cosmic voids, each tens of millions of light years across.
Matter accumulates where the voids meet, forming a cosmic web
of walls, filaments, and clusters of galaxies. This illustration was awarded first place in the informational graphics category in the 2011 Science/NSF International Science & Engineering
Visualization Challenge.
9/11: new theory on collapse World Trade Center
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More than ten years after the fact, a scientists based at the Norwegian research institute SINTEF is proposing that a well-documented chemical reaction spelled the ultimate demise of the Twin Towers after the attacks of September 11, 2001. This isn’t another conspiracy theory, nor is it proven fact. But Christian Simensen theorizes that a mix of molten aluminum from the aircraft bodies mixed with water from the sprinkler systems could have catalyzed secondary blasts that brought the World Trade Center towers to the ground.
Modern cases of evolution and adaptation
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Animals (including humans) are constantly adapting to their environments. Here are ten reminders that this incredible process is constant—not limited to the distant past. These examples span a few different types of changes, including individual mutations (as with the humans), learned behaviors (as with the Muscovite dogs), new adaptations (as with the cave fish) and newly discovered evolutions (as with the satellite-dish-shaped leaf). Think of this as more of an overview of how things can change rather than any particular argument.
The perfect bird perch
Babiana ringens, a South African flowering plant locally known as the Rat’s Tail, shows a very particular evolution to invite pollinating birds to dip their beaks into its flowers: a specialized bird perch. B. ringens’s flowers grow on the ground, which could mean it garners less attention from birds that don’t wish to hang around in that dangerous spot for too long. To entice the Malachite sunbird, the plant has evolved to grow a firm stalk in a perfect perching position for feeding.
Scottish scientists are trying to create inorganic life
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Scientists at Glasgow University are on a mission to create a form of life from inorganic molecules. The team, led by Professor Lee Cronin, has demonstrated a way of creating an inorganic cell, in which internal membranes control the movement of energy and materials, just as in a living cell. These cells can also store electricity and could be used in medicine and chemistry as sensors or to contain chemical reactions.
Slide from professor Cronin’s TED talk on Inorganic life