What Does Sound Look Like?

MATRON OF MORBIDITY

MATRON OF MORBIDITY from Narratively on Vimeo.

Elinor Wrobel, eighty, isn’t your typical collector. At home, rooms are filled with art, costumes and objects, but in the heart of Sydney, Australia, Elinor spends her days preserving hundreds of human body parts collected from the Sydney Hospital Morgue. The Morbid Anatomy museum, housed in Sydney Hospital, is lined with glass jars showing the disease and suffering of bygone generations.

A former nurse, art collector and curator, Elinor recovered the collection from a musty attic crawling with cockroaches and fought tooth and nail for the specimens to be restored and exhibited to the public. Several times, hospital administrators have sought to transfer the specimens elsewhere, or convert the museum into office spaces, but so far Wrobel has prevailed. She believes the hundreds of unique anatomical specimens from people dating back to the 1890s are not only an important resource for medical students, but also a “beautiful” reminder of our own mortality.

World's Biggest Cave in Discovered in Vietnam

I had heard about the discovery and exploration of this cave five or so years ago. It's nice to see it documented so beautifully in this National Geographic film. It kind of brings together a whole host of personal interests of mine: nature, exploration of the unknown, caving and rock climbing.

Up Into Space and Back Down Again

Cameras mounted on the booster rockets of the space shuttle take you on a ride through the launch, the detachment and the touchdown. I was amazed that the two booster rockets landed so close to one another.
 

Is Sad Music Actually Sad? | Idea Channel | PBS Digital Studios

DNA Portrait

This short documentary is about the intersection between visual art and cutting edge science.

From TED Blog:

 DNA Portrait is a lovely short documentary shot by TED's own Kari Mulholland. It features the work of the artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg, who spent time collecting hairs shed in public spaces... and then sequencing the DNA therein to print 3D sculptures of what those hairs' owners might look like. Whoa. The film is also the secret story of the lab run by TEDGlobal 2012 speaker, Ellen Jorgensen. At Genspace, people are able to experiment with DNA-based technology, regardless of their scientific knowledge or experience. As Jorgensen comments in the film, Dewey-Hagborg's work is super interesting, not to mention searingly contemporary. "It's a very accessible way for the public to engage with this new technology. It really brings it to light how powerful it is, the idea that a hair from your head can fall on your street and a perfect stranger can pick it up and know something about it," she says, adding: "With DNA sequencing becoming faster and cheaper, this is the world we're all going to be living in."

Hendrik Poinar: Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth!

The Shape of Soundwaves

I may have posted about this visual phenomenon a few years ago. There have been lots of Youtube videos that conduct similar experiments, but I think this one is really nicely done.

Medical Oddities from the Bowels of the Mütter

I've always been a goth at heart. Medical oddities are prominent in my darker macabre interests.

"Disturbingly informative," is how museum director Robert Hicks describes Philadelphia's Mütter Museum--items of interest include a gangrenous hand, wax models of extinct diseases, deformed bones and body parts. Now imagine what's in the basement. Science Friday got a behind-the-scenes tour.

Bristle-Bot swarming

Moshpit Simulator

Apparently, moshpits and heated gas molecules have a lot in common. Play with the controls on the flocking simulator to get different levels of chaos.
From: http://mattbierbaum.github.com/moshpits.js/
Listen to the news story about the science behind the simulator on NPR.

Miguel Nicolelis: A monkey that controls a robot with its thoughts. No, really.

One of the most amazing TED talks I've seen in a long time.

Can we use our brains to directly control machines -- without requiring a body as the middleman? Miguel Nicolelis talks through an astonishing experiment, in which a clever monkey in the US learns to control a monkey avatar, and then a robot arm in Japan, purely with its thoughts. The research has big implications for quadraplegic people -- and maybe for all of us. (Filmed at TEDMED 2012.)

Intelligence Squared: Science Refutes God - Full Debate

Lawrence Krauss and Michael Shermer debate Dinesh D'Souza and Ian Hutchinson over the question of whether science refutes god. IQ2-Science Refutes God - Full Debate from Intelligence Squared U.S. on Vimeo.

On the fundamental question--evolution or creation?--Americans are on the fence. According to one survey, while 61% of Americans believe we have evolved over time, 22% believe this evolution was guided by a higher power, with another 31% on the side of creationism. For some, modern science debunks many of religion's core beliefs, but for others, questions like "Why are we here?" and "How did it all come about?" can only be answered through a belief in the existence of God. Can science and religion co-exist?

Ray Kurzweil "How to Create a Mind", Authors at Google

I thought this was a great lecture by the futurist, Ray Kurzweil. I have yet to read his new book, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, which might be my next purchase.

About the book:

In How to Create a Mind, The Secret of Human Thought Revealed, the bold futurist and author of The New York Times bestseller The Singularity Is Near explores the limitless potential of reverse engineering the human brain. Ray Kurzweil is arguably today's most influential—and often controversial—futurist. In How to Create a Mind, Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization—reverse engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges from the brain, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence in addressing the world's problems. He thoughtfully examines emotional and moral intelligence and the origins of consciousness and envisions the radical possibilities of our merging with the intelligent technology we are creating. Certain to be one of the most widely discussed and debated science books of the year, How to Create a Mind is sure to take its place alongside Kurzweil's previous classics.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson - Greatest (Secular) Sermon Ever

Neil deGrasse Tyson has the knack of making the seemingly dry scientific subjects of astronomy, physics, chemistry and humanism come to life with his words almost like a Disney animator can captivate an audience in pictures... Science has the facts on its side, now all it needs is more storytellers of facts to make those facts interesting and captivating...

Challenges of Getting to Mars: Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror

If this actually works it will be a gigantic milestone in human ingenuity.

Team members at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory share the challenges of the Curiosity Mars rover's final minutes to landing on the surface of Mars.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Climate Change Deniers

During an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher on March 2, 2012, Dr. Tyson explains the stages that deniers of scientific fact must go through.

Richard Dawkins & Daniel Dennett. Oxford, 9 May 2012

A discussion between evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins and neuroscientist/philosopher, Daniel Dennett on the similarities between biological evolution and the evolution of culturally contagious ideas, or "memes", such as religion.

Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence

http://www.ted.com Psychologist Jonathan Haidt asks a simple, but difficult question: why do we search for self-transcendence? Why do we attempt to lose ourselves? In a tour through the science of evolution by group selection, he proposes a provocative answer.

Ferrofluid- Liquid Magnetic Sculpture

I've never seen anything quite like this. I am normally a bit skeptical of artwork that relies too heavily on new technologies. After the wow-factor wears off, you are left with something that is purely decorative. But I have to throw all that skepticism aside with this one and just sit mesmerized after I pick my jaw up off the floor. The sculpture apparently uses electromagnets to control an iron/oil-based liquid called ferrofluid.


From the website:

The body of the tower was made by a new technique called “ferrofluid sculpture” that enables artists to create dynamic sculptures with fluid materials. This technique uses one electromagnet, and its iron core is extended and sculpted. The ferrofluid covers the sculpted surface of a three-dimensional iron shape that was made on an electronic NC lathe. The movement of the spikes in the fluid is controlled dynamically on the surface by adjusting the power of the electromagnet. The shape of the iron body is designed as helical so that the fluid can move to the top of the helical tower when the magnetic field is strong enough.