29th April 2011 Volcano

A rather nice video from New Scientist shows a shock wave from the volcano. I really wasn't expecting it to be so visible.
  http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/04/close-up-and-personal-with-an-active-volcano.html

29th April 2011 Made by Virus!

Inspired by shells, Angela Belcher uses viruses to grow batteries. Angela Belcher: Using nature to grow batteries

28th April 2011 Chairman of the Board, Burning the Candle of Both Ends

In mediaeval times, in the great hall, there would be a main table, called a board, since it was pretty much just a board on legs. The farmer, as the main person, would sit on a chair. He sat on a chair at the board, thus he was the chairman of the board.

Rush candles were made by dipping a soft rush into fat. They were held at the centre, so the candle formed the top of a letter T.  They would last about 20 minutes. Because of the way they are held, both ends of the rush can be lit at once, thus burning the candle at both ends which would be reserved for special occasions as it would burn very quickly away.

Another expression mentioned is kippers for curtains although from what I can find it should be kippers and curtains. This is a Brummy (Birmingham) expression which I haven't heard before. It means keeping up appearances even if you have to starve yourself to do so. Nice curtains but can only afford kippers to eat.

Source: BBC TV - If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home 1. The Living Room

27th April 2011 Checklist for Evaluating Scientific Papers

Useful list to help evaluate the validity of research especially in medicine:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2696241/table/T2/

26th April 2011 Bacteria in Space

In a fascinating article [1], Ed Yong explains how experiments in space are providing insight into disease on Earth. It's well worth a read.

Extreme Conditions

In extreme conditions, we can learn much about how bacteria functions. In hot undersea vents, studying bacterium led to the discovery of an enzyme which could create pieces of DNA at high temperature.  This enzyme gave rise to the polymerase chain reaction which is used to multiply DNA in the lab.[2]

For many years it was believed that bacteria could not live in the harsh conditions of the stomach but, against much disbelief and scorn, two Australians, Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, showed that Helicobacter pylori bacterium is a major factor in stomach ulcers.[5]

Bacteria in Space

Scientists led by Cheryl Nickerson have found that salmonella bacteria are far more virulent in microgravity (almost zero gravity) than they are on earth. They clump together more easily, which forms a biofilm which is more prone to cause disease. It is thought that this clumping is triggered easier by the reduced force of the liquid over the bacteria, which would usually indicate to the bacteria that they have reached the calmer regions of the body where they are adapted to reproduce.[ 1, page 3]

The mechanism which controls the changes in salmonella is a protein called Hfq. This switched genes on and off. If something to target Hfg could be found, it could lead to a weapon against not only salmonella but other bacteria too.

Weakened Immune Systems

In space, astronauts' immune systems are weakened since the white blood cells do not activate properly. Putting this together with the stronger bacteria and lack of medical facilities and care, it adds up to a hazardous situation for those travelling in space.

Update: Rosie Redfield (University of British Columbia) has some doubts as to the rigor of the paper the article is based on.[10]

Sources

1. Wired Magazine: Space Medicines Final Frontier
2. Wikipedia: Micro-g Environment
3. Wikipedia: Polymerase Chain Reaction
4. Wikipedia: Hfq Protein
5. Wikipedia.: Timeline of peptic ulcer disease and Helicobacter pylori
6. Wikipedia: Barry Marshall 
7. Wikipedia: Robin Warren
8. Wikipedia: Helicobacter pylori
9. Sciencemuseum: Spacebacteria
10. Rosie Redfield: Do bacteria become superbugs in space?

26th April 2011 Mersienne Primes

For which values of a and n is N=aⁿ-1 a prime?

Jason Rosenhouse at Scienceblogs gives a nice explanation of the possibility of finding primes for different values. He shows why the only possible value for a is 2, and that n must be a prime. If these conditions are not met, then there N is not a prime, but if they are N may be a prime.

Sources

Evolutionblog: Monday Math MersennePrimes

24th April 2011 Marvellous Mushrooms

A week ago, I mentioned how mushrooms were being used to take agricultural waste and turn it into an alternative to Styrofoam. Well, not only can mushroom be used to provide a biodegradable packaging material, it seems they could be used to break down disposable nappies which may take centuries to rot away.

The problem with nappies is they are high in cellulose, which does not decay quickly. However, oyster mushrooms will feed on this and can completely break down a nappy in 4 months. The nappies are steam treated to prevent the spread of disease, and then the mushrooms should, theoretically, be safe to eat. The  problem with this is that the cost of the steam treating may make it non-viable. On the other hand, the selling of the mushrooms is really just a bonus compared with destruction of potentially billions of dirty nappies.

Source: The Economist: Bottom feeders

24th April 2011 Cockroaches

This brought back some memories for me of an amazing lady called Alice Gray (1914-1994) who was an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She kept pet cockroaches in her office there including some rather large Madagascar hissing cockroaches. I spent 4 1/2 months with her, learning about insects and origami. One very important lesson I learnt from her generosity was that to accept a gift is to allow the person the joy of giving, and to refuse is to deny them that.

24th April 2011 Fractals

This video is a short introduction to fractals. It explains their repetitive nature, called self symmetry, and briefly introduces fractional dimension, that is that some things have dimensions other than 1,2 or 3.

Koch Snowflake

This fractal is called the Koch Snowflake. Starting with an equilateral triangle, the snowflake is formed by splitting each edge into thirds and then, for each edge drawing another triangle with the centre third of the line as its base. This is repeated infinitely.

By António Miguel de Campos via Wikipedia

At any step, the length of the line is 4/3 times longer than on the previous iteration, since three sections are replaced by four. This means that the line formed enclosing the snowflake has infinite length. This infinite length surrounds a finite area.

Calculation of Area of Koch Snowflake

At iteration 1, there are 3 edges of length s.
At iteration 2, there are 4 * 3 edges since each edge is replaced by 4 edges of length 1/3 s.
At iteration 3, there are 4*(4*3) = 4² * 3 edges since each of the 4 * 3 edges is replaces by 4 edges of length 1/3 * (1/3 s) = 1/3²  s.
...
At iteration n, there are 4^n-1 * 3 edges of length 1/3^n-1 s.

If the area of the original triangle is A, then the area of one of the additional triangles is (1/3)² times the area of the original triangle because the length of its base is a third of the size of original.  There are 3 such triangles so the total area after one iteration is

A +3(1/3)²A = A(1 + 1/3) = 4/3 A.

At iteration n, there will be one new triangle for each edge in the previous iteration, iteration n-1 giving 4^n-2*3 triangles. The area of these triangles will each be (1/3^n-1)²A = (1/3²)^n-1A  = (1/9)^n-1A = 1/9^n-1A where A is the area of the original triangle. This gives an increase in area from iteration n-1 to iteration n of

4^n-2*3 * 1/9^n-1A = 3 * 4^n-2/9^n-1A

So, after n iterations, the total area is

4/3 A + 3*4/9²A + 3*4²/9³ +...+ 3*4^n-2/9^n-1.

Apart from the first term, 4/3 A, this is a geometric progression, with initial term   a=3*4/9²A and common ratio r=4/9. As n tends to infinite, we have the sum of an infinite geometric progression with 0<r<1. The sum of this is

a/(1-r) =   3*4/9²A / (1 - 4/9) = 3*4/9²A*9/5 =  4/15 A,

and hence the total area of the Koch snowflake is

   4/3 A + 4/15 A = 24/15 A = 8/5 A.

Hence, the area is 1.4 times the area of the original triangle.

Fractal Dimension

The fractal dimension of the Koch Snowflake can be thought of as too big to be 1 dimensional because every piece of it is made up of lots of smaller pieces joined at angles which means it is not like a line. It's also too small to be two-dimensional as it doesn't cover a plane.

To convert an increase in the length by a fixed factor of the sides of an object in Euclean space (everyday space) to the corresponding increase in area, we have to square the factor. For instance, if we triple the length of the sides of a rectangle we have to multiply the area of the rectangle by 3². If we increase the length of the sides of a three dimensional object, he have to cube the factor we increased the length by. In other words, we can consider dimension as the power we have to use to convert.

Another way of looking at it is to look at a decrease in length.  Suppose we decrease a length by a factor of  1/f. How many copies of the new object will it take to cover the new object?  For example, if we cut the sides of a cube in half, then we can fit 2³=8 smaller cubes inside the original cube.

Suppose we decrease the length of the side by a factor 1/f.  How many copies F of the new object will we need to fill the old object?

in 2-dimensions is F=f²,
in 3-dimensions is F=f³, and
in D-dimensions is F=f^D.

To extract D from this, we use logs.

log F= log (f^D)
log F = D log f
D = log F/log f

For the Koch Snowflake, at each iteration, 1 line is replaced by 4 lines, each of length 1/3 the original. Hence F=4 and f=3, and so its fractal dimension is log 4/log 3  which is about 1.26.

Sources

Wikipedia: Koch Snowflake
Wikipedia: Fractal dimension

23rd April 2011 What's in a word?

How easy it is to change our attitude by changing a single word, causing us to no longer look at the person but to dehumanise them. We ease our consciences by devaluing a person so actions against them don't seem so bad. For example, from  an article by  Steve Cuno: How a single word change can make cruelty seem OK:

In a breathtaking high-speed car chase, he barely evaded the hoodlums bent on beating the daylights out of his friend and him.

Fairly certain that the average car chase does not spontaneously generate, I asked if he and his friend might have done anything to provoke his would-be attackers.

“Yeah,” he said. “We threw beer on a couple of women.”

What may trouble you, as it did me, is that everyone hearing this tale of reckless youth erupted in laughter. No one asked what on earth had moved him to cruelly assault two human beings he didn’t even know. Everyone took it as no more than an innocent prank.

 Time for me to come clean. I didn’t quite quote him accurately. He didn’t say “women.” He said “hookers.”

When I share this anecdote, a not-unusual reaction is: Hookers? Oh, that’s different. Somehow, changing “women” to “hookers” makes the assault appear less serious — perhaps even understandable — by making the victims seem less-than-human.

We need to keep check on this dehumanising of individuals or groups, whether through colour, religion, sexuality, intelligence or whatever, since it leads to cruelty against them being seen as more 'acceptable'.

The rest of the article is well worth a read.

22nd April 2011 Password Security

I really really really hope this is a spoof but is it? Can American Express really be saying that a short letter only password of at most length 8 is better than a longer one using special characters?

It reminds me of my university days, back before we all had home computers. We were advised to pick a password that meant something to us and was easy to remember. My friend cracked mine in a matter of minutes and then found it hilarious to wreak havoc with what I was doing. It seems that just allowing letters is really encouraging people to use easy passwords.

Just how silly is this?

Letters only, length 8

With just upper and lower case letters, there are

52 + 52² + 52³ + 52⁴ + 52⁵ + 52⁶+ 52⁷ + 52⁸
= 52(52^8-1)/(52-1)
= 54 507 958 502 660,

which is about 5.5 x 10¹³ passwords.

Letters, numbers, special characters, length 8

Using all upper and lower characters, numbers and special characters (96 in all), the number of 8 character passwords jumps to

96 + 962 + 963 + 964 + 965 + 966+ 967 + 968
= 96(96^8-1)/(96-1)
=7 289 831 534 994 528,

that is about 7.2 x 10¹⁵, which is 100 times more than for the letter only passwords.

Letters, numbers, special characters, length 12

If we allow passwords of up to length 12, the number jumps to

96(96^12-1)/(96-1) which is about 6.2 x 10²³ passwords.

Cracking Times

So in the worse case it is going to take a brute force attack 10 billion times longer, to crack a password of up to length 12 using all special characters, letters and numbers than it is to crack a letter only password of length 8.

Using a brute force attack (and that is the slowest method of attack),  at 1 billion checks per second, (supercomputer in 2009 [1]), in the worse case scenario,  this would take 15 hours,  84 days, and 20 million years respectively.

In November 2010, using brute force, 14 passwords of length at most 6 using all characters were cracked in 49 minutes using Amazon EC2.[2]  There are 7.9 billion such passwords, which is 100 times fewer than for  letter only length 8 passwords, so just for comparison, we could say it would take about 49/14*100 minutes, that is 6 hours, to crack one of these type of passwords.

So what can we say? Length really does matter!

Sources

1. http://www.lockdown.co.uk/?pg=combi#classF 
2. http://www.esecurityplanet.com/headlines/article.php/3920306/Cracking-Wi-Fi-Password-Protection-with-Amazon-EC2.htm
   

21st April 2011 Chimeras

A chimera is an animal which has two distinct sets of genetically different cells arising from different fertilised eggs. If these different cells arise from one fertilised egg, it's called mosaicism.

A while back, in an episode of CSI, a man was found to have two different sets of DNA. Is this just fiction or does it really happen in humans?

Formation of Chimeras and Mosaics

The ways in which chimeras can form are as follows.

• Fraternal twin embryos fuse together to become a single embryo, so many cell types could be mixed.
• Fraternal twins share a blood supply and their blood mixes. Blood stem cells from one settles in the bone marrow of the other so that blood of the other twin can continue to form. This type of chimera is blood only.   [4]

Mosaicism occurs when there is an error in the way the cells divide in the embryo. Both the original and the mutated cells split and, if this occurs early enough, cells end up with a different genotype.[4]

Examples

A real example of this happened in 2002 when an American lady, Lydia Fairchild was tested and found to not be the mother of her children. On further testing of a sample taken from a different part of her body, her DNA matched the children's.

An earlier record, from 1998, is of a lady who needed a kidney transplant. Her bone marrow showed just one set of DNA yet other cells showed two separate sets.  She had all four sets of chromosomes from her parents. All her cells were XX so most likely two eggs, fertilised with X chromosomes, merged.[8]

It is possible that XY and XX embryos merging form what was called a hermaphrodite but is now referred to as intersex in medicine.

Problems with Forensics

Identifying fathers, body parts from a plane crash, or blood from a crime scene might be wrong if it is unknown that someone is a chimera.

The probability of chimeras is unknown, but with the event of IVF, it is more likely as twins are required for it to occur.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: intersex
2.  Wikipedia: hermaphrodite
3.  Wikipedia: Lydia Fairchild
4.  Stanford University: Understanding Genetics -Ask a Geneticist 
5. http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/M/Mosaics.html#TetragameticHuman 
6. Flatrock: dual identities
7. Wikipedia: Blood type history 
8. NPR podcast on chimerism
9. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/21/the-many-yous-in-you-–-what-lydia-fairchild-has-in-common-with-a-sponge-and-an-anemone/

21 April 2011 The Sun

NASA has released a collection of beautiful footage of the Sun, shot over the last year.

20th April 2011 Their Point of View

It's so easy to only see our own point of view, but what is it like from the other person's perspective? What difference would it make if we could only understand, not agree necessarily, but just understand?

20th April 2011 Inactivity

Unconscious Activity

Since weight gain is about eating more calories than we exercise away, when all else is the same (weight, height, amount of exercise, calorie intake) why do some gain and some lose weight?

In a study [1] on metabolism in 2005, it was discovered, using sensors, that those who don't gain weight are subconsciously moving much more than those that do. This is called non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) which includes every day activity which isn't specifically classified as 'exercises' such as walking to work, typing, gardening, or just fidgeting [2]. It was found that the obese people sat for on average 10 hours, which was two hours longer than the lean people. [1, 4]. Farmers in Jamaica had only 5 hours sitting. They had 5000 daily  movements compared with only 1500 for the obese group.

Even when lean people gained weight or obese people lost weight, their NEAT activity was unchanged. The extra NEAT activity of the lean people could burn 350 calories a day. It is suggested that the reason for this could be biological as no change was noted with the change of lean/obesity levels.[2]  This research was done with mildly obese people. I wonder if the same holds true for very obese people losing a lot of weight since it's a lot easier to actually move when you don't have a lot of extra mass getting in the way! I also wonder if it really is biological or just a case of habits taking time to change? Research has been done on looking at the possible neural and endocrine systems that control NEAT which could perhaps indicate a way treat obesity.[3]

Well ok, so some people are 'naturally' more active than others and they burn more calories so don't put on weight. So how about I just carry on sitting a lot and exercise a bit more? Does that compensate for the sitting?

Sitting

There are several things that happen to us when we sit, apart from the obvious lowering of calorie expenditure.

•  Metabolic rate drops to around 1 per minute compared with 3 for walking about.
•  Insulin effectiveness drops (by 40%) with 24 hours of inactivity when calories intake is not reduced, increasing the risk of metabolic disease and thus type 2 diabetes. [5, 9]
•  The enzymes responsible for breaking down lipids and triglycerides drop causing  HDL (good cholesterol) to fall as well. [4]

In a study of Americans, the mortality rate of men who spend 6+ hours of their leisure time per day sitting was 20% higher than the men who sat for 3 or less hours. For women, it was around 40% higher. [4]

A recent study of Australians showed a positive correlation between the amount of time spent watching TV, indicating a sedentary lifestyle, and the overall risk of death, as well as an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.[10]

The Answer?

Apart from not sitting as much, which may not be possible in work situations, we can increase our NEAT activities by fidgeting, maybe standing up more often, or perhaps install a standing or treadmill desk.[4]

We need to look at our environment and see how we can make changes to encourage ourselves to move more. [4]

Sources

1. Science. 2005 Jan 28;307(5709):584-6. Interindividual variation in posture allocation: possible role in human obesity. Levine JA, Lanningham-Foster LM, McCrady SK, Krizan AC, Olson LR, Kane PH, Jensen MD, Clark MM (Abstract)
2. Best Pract Res Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2002 Dec;16(4):679-702. Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT). Levine JA (Abstract)
3.  J Neuroendocrinol. 2007 Dec;19(12):923-40.Central neural and endocrine mechanisms of non-exercise activity thermogenesis and their potential impact on obesity.Novak CM, Levine JA (Abstract)
4. New York Times: Is Sitting a Lethal Activity?
5. Metabolism. 2010 Nov 9. [Epub ahead of print] Effects of 1 day of inactivity on insulin action in healthy men and women: interaction with energy intake. Stephens BR, Granados K, Zderic TW, Hamilton MT, Braun B (Abstract)
6. http://scienceblogs.com/thepumphandle/2011/04/stand_up_before_you_hurt_yours.php
7. http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=can-sitting-too-much-kill-you-2011-01-06
8. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2011 Jan 18;57(3):292-9. Screen-based entertainment time, all-cause mortality, and cardiovascular events: population-based study with ongoing mortality and hospital events follow-up. Stamatakis E, Hamer M, Dunstan DW. (Abstract)
9. Am J Prev Med. 2010 Oct;39(4):379-88 Occupational sitting and health risks: a systematic review. van Uffelen JG, Wong J, Chau JY, van der Ploeg HP, Riphagen I, Gilson ND, Burton NW, Healy GN, Thorp AA, Clark BK, Gardiner PA, Dunstan DW, Bauman A, Owen N, Brown WJ. (Review of Studies April 2009 - Abstract)
10. Circulation. 2010;121:384-391Epidemiology and Prevention Television Viewing Time and Mortality The Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study (AusDiab) 

20th April 2011 Atmosphere on the Moon

The Moon has a surface boundary exosphere which has somewhere between a few hundred thousanda and a few million molecules per cubic centimetre. This would be considered a good vacuum on Earth.

Dust in the Atmosphere

There has also been dust observed in the atmosphere but how can that be when there isn't enough atmosphere for weather?

• The moon is bombarded with meteorite which kick up dust but there is more in in the atmosphere than this would account for.
• On the day side of the moon, ultraviolet rays are strong enough to displace electrons from surface dust leaving it positively charged. These dust particles repel each other going in the direction possible which is up. This leads to dust plumes. This dust eventually returns to the surface under gravity.

Water on the Moon

Ice has been found in shaded craters, and water molecules in the soil raising the question of whether there is a lunar water cycle.

LADEE Mission

In May 2013, the launch of LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) is planned.  It will sample the moon's exosphere and measure its conditions.

Why care about the Moon's Atmosphere?

In order to understand our own atmosphere, we need to look at other atmospheres. Looking at Venus's atmosphere gave an understanding of the greenhouse effect. Earth is so closely tied to the moon than once a month Earth passes through the Moon's  tail, caused by solar winds, and the Moon passes through the Earth's. What effect does this have? There are many unanswered questions about the Moon's atmosphere but hopefully there will be some answers over the next few years.

Sources

Wikipedia:Moon dust NASA: LADEE mission Wikipedia: Atmosphere of the Moon 365 Days of Astronomy: 20th April 2011 The Moon's Mysterious Exosphere Podcast by Brian Day, NASA Lunar Science Institute

19th April 2011 Types of Stars

This is a summary of the different types of stars and states and when they occur in a star's lifespan.

Protostar

When a giant molecular cloud collapses down, it forms a protostar.  It continues to collect matter and to collapse down for about 100 thousand years for a solar mass 1 star. When this collection of matter ends, the protostar becomes known as a T Tauri star.

These stars are too cold for fusion to take place. Their only energy comes from the release of gravitational potential energy is converted to heat as the matter is drawn closer in.

T Tauri Star

Like protostars, T Tauri stars do not have high enough temperature and pressure at their cores for fusion.
They continue to contract for about 100 million years before becoming a main sequence star.

Main Sequence Star

A main sequence star is one which has reached an equilibrium between gravity pulling the star inwards and pressure from fusion pushing it outwards. This balance is called hydrostatic equilibrium. It enables the star to keep its form as a sphere.

When fusion occurs, hydrogen is converted to helium in the core of the star.

A main sequence star can range in size from 0.08 solar masses (80 times the mass of Jupiter), where fusion starts, to theoretically over 100 solar masses.

Main Sequence stars are split into several categories, labelled by letters, which are listed below from largest, hottest and brightest to smallest. The colours are the standard colour descriptions of the stars.

• O - blue
• B - blue to blue white
• A - white
•  F- yellowish white
• G - yellow
•  K - orange
• M - red

The Sun is a G-type star.  It is sometimes called a yellow dwarf. O-type stars are the rarest of stars with only about 1 in 3 million stars being of this type.

The largest stars are the shortest lived, and the smallest are the longest. The Sun could stay in this stage for 10 billion years or so.

When the star runs out of hydrogen in its core it moves on to the next stage of its evolution.

Red Giant (Stars of  0.5-10 solar masses)

Without hydrogen to fuel fusion in the core, the fusion stops. This means that the outward pressure which was balancing gravity is removed causing the star to collapse in on itself.  This causes the hydrogen around the core to heat and initiates fusion in the shell.  The heat generated by this causes the outer layers of the star to expand greatly.  Because of this expansion, the surface area increases meaning that the heat from fusion is spread out. This leads to a lower surface temperature and the visible light shifts towards red. The star has entered its red giant phase.

Through various processes, depending on size, the red giant phase ends after a few million years. The next phase is the white dwarf.

Red Dwarfs (Stars of 0.075 - 0.5 solar masses)

These stars do not accumulate an inert core of helium and thus may exhaust all of their hydrogen fuel without ever becoming red giants.  They are relatively cool stars and so burn very slowly leading to a predicted lifespan greater than that of the universe at present. This means that there are no observations of these stars aging.

Supergiants (Stars of  10-70 solar masses)

Instead of forming red giants, this massive stars form supergiants. These can be red supergiants or blue supergiants. This class of stars is the source of super novae. I'll look at this in more detail later.

White Dwarf Star

Eventually, through burning and contracting, huge pulsations build up causing a massive release of gravitational potential energy as heat. This blasts the outer layers of the star out into space, perhaps forming a planetary nebula. The core of the star cools to form a small, dense white dwarf.

Sources

Wikipedia: Protostar
Wikipedia: T Tauri Star
Wikipedia: Main Sequence Star
Wikipedia: Spectral Classification
Wikipedia: Red Giant
Wikipedia: Red Dwarfs
Wikipedia: Supergiants
Wikipedia: Life of a Star
Universe Today: Types of Stars
Universe Today: Star Evolution
Enchanted Learning: Star types
Cosmos: White Dwarf
2nd April 2011 Formation of Elements

18th April 2012 Bah Styrofoam! Yay Mushrooms!

Styrofoam gets everywhere and it will still be around in 10 000 years.

What alternative is there?

Mushrooms! The blocks are not made from these mycelium but are grown. The mycelium are mixed with local agricultural waste which is placed in a mould and kept in the dark for 5 days.  At the end of the five days, fibres have filled the mould making the block of packaging material.

This packaging material never has to end up as landfill as it can be used to improve soil.  It wont be around in 10000 years and it's also fire resistant.

It is already being used by some companies instead of Styrofoam.



USA Science Festival Blog: Revolutionizing product packaging  for another video
Ecovative Design the company growing the packaging
Steelcase goes diy with home grown packaging a company using the packaging

18th April 2011 Paper and Carbon-13

Why study carbon-13 uptake by trees?

The uptake of carbon-13 instead of carbon-12 by plants is dependent on environmental conditions, and as such is an indicator of environmental changes. Plants prefer carbon-12 over carbon-13. When photosynthesis is intense, they have to use carbon dioxide which contains carbon-13.  Due to the burning of fossil fuels, themselves low in carbon-13, the fraction of carbon-13 compared with carbon-12 in the air has decreased.

How can carbon-13 uptake be measured?

When testing trees for the amount of carbon-13 in atmospheric carbon dioxide, scientists have to take samples from many trees from different places. It can also be measured by using ice cores.

So what's new?

Instead of travelling the world in search of trees, Prof. Dan Yakir, Weizmann Institute of Science, went to the library. He took samples from magazines and newspapers dated 1880-2000. These magazines were from two European and two American publishers. He analysed the amount of carbon-13 in these paper samples to see if they reflected the changes in environment caused by fossil fuel burning.

Why does this matter?

The analysis of the carbon-13 content of the paper showed that its concentration in the atmosphere has decreased demonstrating the increased use of fossil fuels. The change in the carbon-13 levels in paper are consistent with the carbon-13 levels in the air and tree rings. This means that the technique could perhaps be used to provide data for climate scientists.  If independent sources for air levels of carbon-13 are available, then this technique could be used to date manuscripts.

Sources

Weizmann Institute of Science: Pollution history preserved in paper
Reading between the lines: Papers report on global change
Wikipedia: Suess effect

18th April 2011 Pencil Urchin

Today  Pharyngula posted a picture on his blog which he didn't identify. In the comments, it was suggested that it is a pencil urchin so I thought I'd take a closer look at these strange creatures.

There are three different types of slate pencil urchin

• Eucidaris tribuloides found in the Atlantic Ocean, close to the shore,
• Heterocentrotus mammillatus found in the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific region, but mainly Hawaii,
• Heterocentrotus trigonarius also found in the tropical waters of the Indo-Pacific region. 

Eucidaris tribuloides
Photo: Nick Hobgood (Wikimedia Commons)

Heterocentrotus trigonarius
Photo: David Burdick (NOAA)

Heterocentrotus mammillatus
Photo: Dr. Dwayne Meadows, NOAA/NMFS/OPR

Their spines are made from aragonite, which is a form of calcium carbonate.

Eucidaris tribuloides

These pencil urchins are brown to reddy brown. They range from about 2-5 inches in size. Their long spines are arranged in 10 rows with smalled spines between. Broken spines can be replaced.  The colour of their spines depends upon which algae covers them.

Their habitat is  a shallow coastal one up to depth about 50 m.  They are often found in seagrass beds, under rocks or in coral crevices. Their main diet is algae.

Heterocentrotus mammillatus

These slate pencil urchins are bright red. They have three types of spines. The longest are triangular which keep predators at bay. Underneath, they have shorter, flatter spines to clamp onto the reef. Finally, the whole body is encased in flat, armour-like spines.

Heterocentrotus trigonarius

These have longer spines than  Heterocentrotus mammillatus, although I can't find any precise details on either species which would enable this to be used to distinguish them.

Carbon Dioxide Levels in the Sea

In tests on various sea creatures, some built more shells when dissolved carbon dioxide levels, and thus acidity, were raised. When the level was raised to seven times the current level, the following was observed.

 This led to the dissolving of aragonite—the form of calcium carbonate produced by corals and some other marine calcifiers. Under such exposure, hard and soft clams, conchs, periwinkles, whelks and tropical urchins began to lose their shells. “If this dissolution process continued for sufficient time, then these organisms could lose their shell completely,” Ries said, “rendering them defenseless to predators.” [WHOI: News Release : In CO2-rich Environment, Some Ocean Dwellers Increase Shell Production]

The pencil urchins used in these experiments were Eucidaris tribuloides.

Summary of Sources

Pharyngula: Mary's Monday Metazoan
Tropical Fish Magazine: Eucidaris Tribuloides
WoRMS taxon details: Eucidaris tribuloides
WoRMS taxon details: Heterocentrotus mamillatus
WoRMS taxon details: Heterocentrotus trigonarius
Hawaiin Isles Hump Back Whale: Heterocentrotus mammillatus
WHOI: News Release : In CO2-rich Environment, Some Ocean Dwellers Increase Shell Production
Wikipedia: Eucidaris tribuloides  
Wikipedia: Heterocentrotus mammillatus
Wikipedia: Heterocentrotus trigonarius
Species-identification.org: Eucidaris tribuloides
Wikipedia: Aragonite

16-18th April 2011 The Sun

Comparison of the Sun and Earth

The Sun has a radius of a little under 700 thousand km which is a bit over 100 times Earth's. Its mass is about 2 x 10³⁰, around 300 thousand times heavier than Earth. This means that it is rather less dense than the Earth, with a density which is only a quarter of Earth's.

How old is the Sun?

The Sun was formed about 4.57 billion years ago when a cloud of  hydrogen molecular gas collapsed.

How far away is the Sun from Earth?

The distance from the Sun to the Earth varies slightly, but is around 1 AU (astronomical unit) which is about 150 million km.

What elements are present in the Sun?

The Sun comprises of mostly hydrogen (90.965%) and helium (8.889%) with small amounts of oxygen (774 ppm), carbon (330 ppm), neon (112 ppm), nitrogen (102 ppm), iron (43 ppm), magnesium (35 ppm), silicon (32 ppm) and sulphur (15 ppm).  [NASA: Sun Fact Sheet ] These are all products of stellar nucleosynthesis, which is the process by which hydrogen fuses together to form the other elements.

When the hydrogen runs out, the Sun will explode and ultimately die. There is enough hydrogen for another 5-7 billion years. [Universe Today: When will the Sun die?]

How long does it take sunlight to reach Earth?

From the surface of the sun, the light takes 8 minutes, but that's only the end of the story. What we see as light starts deep within the Sun, in its core.  When fusion occurs, it not only produces the elements mentioned above, but it also produces photons and neutrinos. The neutrinos pass through pretty much anything, so they disperse immediately. The photons, on the other hand, are absorbed by the first few millimetres of plasma. They are then re-emitted, with slightly less energy, in a random direction. This means that they take a random walk in order to reach the surface of the Sun. Old textbooks estimated it to take 17 thousand to 50 million years but using a more accurate mathematical model gives a estimate of 10-170 thousand years. So what we see as sunlight actually took at least 10 thousand years to get here! [NASA: Ancient Sunlight]

What is the structure of the Sun?

The sun consists of various layers at different temperatures.

Layer	Temperature in Kelvin	Location
Core	15 million	From the centre to 20-25% of radius
Radiative zone	5-10 million	From 20-25% up to 70% of radius
Convective zone	2 million	200 000 km to  the surface
Photosphere	6600-4400	The surface (10-400 km thick)
Temperature minimum	4100	About 500 km above the surface
Chromosphere	4300-30000	Up to 10000 km above the surface
Transition region	0.02-1 million	About 200 km thickness above the chromosphere
Corona	0.5-2 or 3 million	From 2500 km and upwards
Heliosphere		Out to past Pluto!

• Core

Fusion burns hydrogen to produce various elements and release neutrinos and photons.

•  Radiative Zone  

This layer is sufficiently dense for heat to travel by thermal radiation. No thermal convection occurs here. Instead, the photons are absorbed and emitted by hydrogen and helium ions as they travel through the layer.

• Convective Zone

Plasma is heated by the radiative layer. This plasma rises, taking heat with it. When it cools, the plasma sinks back down to again be heated.

• Photosphere

This is the visible surface of the Sun. It's a relatively thin layer. We can not see further into the Sun than this level as deeper down is opaque due to a higher density of H^- ions, called hydrogen anions, in lower levels.

The plasma from the convective layer breaks through to the surface here, allowing light to escape

In 1868, Norman Lockyer hypothesised that absorption lines detected in the photosphere were a new element, unknown on Earth at the time. He called this hypothetical element helium after the sun god Helios. It was 25 more years before helium was isolated on Earth.

• Temperature minimum

As the name suggests, the temperature minimum is the coolest part of the Sun.  It is sufficient cool that the spectra of simple molecules such as carbon monoxide and water can be detected.

• Chromosphere

The chromosphere can only be detected using narrow-band filters. During a total eclipse it can be seen as a thin band of colour around the sun.

• Transition region
  

Below this layer, gravity is the dominant force. Helium is totally ionised in the transition region. Ionised helium slows radiative cooling of the plasma. This allows the rapid rise in temperature in this region.

• Corona

The fourth layer of the Sun's atmosphere. It is visible in a total eclipse. It consists of very low density plasma. It is continually expanding into space to form the solar winds.

• Heliosphere

The fifth and final layer of the Sun's atmosphere stretches out to the edges of the Solar System, providing a protective bubble of solar gas which moves with the Sun. This gas is continually emitted from the Sun as solar winds.  It protects the Solar System from ionised galactic gas and from most of the cosmic energetic particles.

What causes weather on the Sun?

Because the Sun is made of gas, it doesn't rotate in the same way as the Earth, a more solid structure.
The inside of the Sun rotates more quickly than the outside. The centre is being twisted much more quickly than the  top and bottom. This twists all the magnetic lines to such an extend that they cause tension and disruptions on the surface of the Sun, which gives rise to the Sun's weather.

Eventually these lines become so tangled that adjacent areas have opposite magnetic fields. This is instable so some areas have to change their field to match their neighbour's. Overall, this causes a reversal of the magnetic poles. This pole reversal occurs about every 11 years.

Summary of Sources

1 .365 Days of Astronomy: 15th April 2011 Our Sun
2. Wikipedia: Sun
3 .NASA: Sun Fact Sheet
4. Wikipaedia: Stellar nucleosynthesis
5. Universe Today: When will the Sun die?
6. NASA: Ancient Sunlight
7. Wikipaedia: Hydrogen anions
8. Universe Today: Sun's Atmosphere
9. Solanki, S.K.; , W. and Ayres, T. (1994). "New Light on the Heart of Darkness of the Solar Chromosphere". Science 263 (5143): 64–66.
10. Space Ref: The Distortion of the Heliosphere: our Interstellar Magnetic Compass

17th April 2011 Cosmic Inflation

Cosmic inflation is a hypothesis which explains

• why the universe appears to be flat
• why it is much bigger than is possible due to the restriction of nothing travelling faster than the speed of light
• why  the universe has the same properties throughout - temperature, density, average galaxy count.

Alan Guth came up with the idea

Imagine a Universe with different conditions everywhere. Some regions might be expanding, some might be contracting, and some might be stationary. Some might have positive curvature, some might have negative curvature, and some might be flat. Some might have a lot of matter, some might have little to none. Some could be very, very hot, and some could be practically at absolute zero. 

In other words, it doesn't matter what your initial conditions are to the Universe. What matters is that, at one point in space, in one of these regions, the right conditions to have inflation exist. Inflation takes this one region of space and expands it exponentially. [It Started with a Bang: The Greatest Story Ever Told -- 01 -- Before the Big Bang]

 We don't know what caused inflation to start and stop but there is a theory of a particle called the inflaton.
[The Greatest Story Ever Told -- 02 -- The Graceful Exit] We also don't know how it went from a sparcely populated universe with maybe a proton per galaxy to what it is today.

Cosmic Journeys: How Large is the Universe?

16th April 2011 Nibiru and 2012

I decided to look into the calculations I found on the mysterious imaginary planet of Nibiru which is supposed to crash into Earth on 21st December 2012, ending the world as we know it.

How big would Nibiru's orbit be?

Its orbit takes 3600 years and is an ellipse with the sun as one of its two foci. [Kepler's First Law: "The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci."]

Kepler's third law states that

"The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit."  

The semi-major axis is the maximum distance of the orbit from its centre.

Let P be the orbital period of Nibiru (in sidereal years) and a be the semi-major axis of its orbit (in AU). Then

P ² α  a³

Since the constant is 1 for the units given, that is,  (sidereal year)²(AU)⁻³,

P ² = a³

and thus

a is the cube root of 3600  ²

Since Niribu is supposed to come close to Earth or even hit it, we assume that this is the closest Nibiru gets to the sun, one of its foci. This closest point is called the perihelion. So if 1 AU is the perihelion, what is the distance to the aphelion, the furthest point from the sun?

From the diagram, we see that it is simply twice the semi-major axis minus 1 AU. That is, the cube root of 3600² minus 1 which is 469 AU to the nearest AU.  The diagram below shows the comparative maximum distances in AU from the sun

Max distance from the sun in AU

and the table gives the figure for each of the planets.

Planet	Orbital Period years	Max Distance from Sun AU	Min Distance from Sun AU	Average Orbital Speed km/s
Mercury	0.24	0.47	0.31	47.87
Venus	0.62	0.73	0.72	35.02
Earth	1	1.02	0.98	29.78
Mars	1.88	1.67	1.38	24.08
Jupiter	11.86	5.49	4.95	13.07
Saturn	29.46	10.12	9.05	9.69
Uranus	84.32	20.08	18.38	6.81
Neptune	163.79	30.44	29.77	5.43
Pluto	248.09	49.31	29.66	4.67
Nibiru	3600	469	1	???

What would its orbit look like?

Using Dr. Douglas P. Hamilton's Orbital Calculator, the values semimajor axis 235 AU, eccentricity 0.995744 and eccentric anomaly 1.418 give the min and max values described above. [Source]  This gives a semiminor axis of about 20 AU.  Eccentricity is a measure of how far from a circle an ellipse is and ranges from 0 (for a circle) to 1.  The orbit is cigar shaped.

How fast is it going?

Nibiru's orbit sends it 469 AU from the Sun.  The gravity from the Sun on Nibiru at such a distance, if it has about the same mass as the Earth, would be around 1/4 millionth that of the Sun on the Earth. Since the gravity is so little, Nibiru will have almost escaped from the Sun's gravity. In order to do this, when it is close in to the Sun, it must almost reach the Sun's escape velocity.  The Sun's escape velocity at Earth's orbit is about 42 km/s.  That means Nibiru would be travelling at somewhere between the speed of Mercury and Venus.  If my calculations are anything like correct, it would seem to only be going at about 0.09 km/s when it's at its aphelion. [Using Kepler's Second Law:"A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time."]
It seems I'm doing something wrong since apparently, Nibiru's orbital velocity is

3.8 x 10⁸ Kilometres per year (or roughly 2.5 AU a year). [Source]

So, for Nibiru to be here on 21st December 2012, it would have to be around 4.2 AU from Earth now. That is around Jupiter's orbit. Surely it would be visible either through infrared or visible light or by gravitational effects?

From this source, Nibiru would be around 7.2 AU from the Sun now, and of magnitude 4.8, if it were the size of Earth.

How will other planets and objects affect its orbit?

Such an elongated orbit is highly unstable (why? I don't know) and so any interaction with a planet or anything else could easily knock it off its orbit.


http://www.2012hoax.org/nibiru
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/orbital.htm
http://astroblogger.blogspot.com/2011/04/looking-for-nibiru.html
http://www.astrosociety.org/2012/ab2009-32.pdf
circumference of an ellipse calculator 

15th April 2011 In Search of Asteroid Moons

Ceres has no satellites larger than 1 or 2 km in diameter and Vesta has none over 50m. [Planetary Society]

NASA

 243 Ida has a satellite Dactyl which was discovery by Galileo about 14 minutes before its closest approach on August 28, 1993.

15th April 2011 Cooking Chicken

When cooking chicken, do not wash or soak the chicken before hand. It does not kill or remove the bacteria. All it does is spread the bacteria around to surfaces and anything the water comes into contact with.

Rinsing or Soaking Chicken

Washing raw poultry before cooking it is not recommended. Bacteria in raw meat and poultry juices can be spread to other foods, utensils, and surfaces. This is called cross-contamination. Rinsing or soaking chicken does not destroy bacteria. Any bacteria that might be present on fresh chicken are destroyed only by cooking.

USA food safety

14th April 2011 Crystal Eyes

Some species of chiton, which is a mollusk, have eyes make of rock crystal. Their shells are also make of this. With these eyes, which are located in their shells, they can distinguish between a possible threat and a the natural dimming of light.  Their vision is probably around a thousand times coarser than human vision.

For them, protein eyes like we have would quickly be worn away.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/04/110414-eyes-rock-crystal-mineral-chiton-mollusk-vision-animals-science/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/14/chitons-see-with-eyes-made-of-rock/

14th April 2011 Asteroid Video - what can we tell?

The asteroid GP59 starts in the middle and winks in and out to the bottom right.

Why is it winking in and out?  It's dimming because it is spinning, and as it spins it must be showing a smaller surface which reflects less light, and then a bigger surface. This indicates that it is elongated in shape and more cylindrical than spherical.  It's about 50 m in diameter.  (Can it really be that small and still visible?)

It's orbit is from just inside Venus to just outside Earth.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/04/14/asteroid-2011-gp59-spins-right-round-baby-right-round/

14th April 2011 Breast Cancer

Healthy breast cells produce the immune protein interleukin-25 which locks onto nearby cells with the receptor for it. This initiates a self-destruct in the cell. Normal cells do not have this receptor but 19% of cancer cells have been found to, including more aggressive ones.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/04/healthy-breast-cells-police-fo.html

14th April 2011 Broccoli & Lung Disease

Super broccoli does it again! It has been found to help clear out lungs in people with lung disease.

Sulphoraphane, a compound found in broccoli and cauliflower when they are damage such as by chewing, has been found to reactivate a chemical pathway in the lungs. This pathway is called NRF2, and is involved in macrophage activation. Macrophages clear the lungs of gunk and bacteria which can cause infection.  This pathway is wiped out by smoking.

It is currently being trialed and will be 3 years before the results are in. Either way, I'm going to carry on eating my broccoli. Yum yum yum!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20378-broccoli-helps-clear-damaged-lungs.html

14th April 2011 Weather and Earthquakes

Over a period of 10 million years, the Indian plate has increased its speed by 20%.  Scientists have created a model to explain this. Erosion from the monsoons has battered the eastern Himalaya Mountains which has lightened the load on that side of the plate.  This has caused the plate to rotate.

Discovery Magazine

14th April 2011 Whoops, the Cogs don't Turn!

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/whoops.htm

14th April 2011 Password Security

A new method of password encryption uses an image to encrypt a longer piece of data. Using a short key, the process of generating the image from the original image is reversed. The longer piece of data can then be read off from the image. Since computers have a harder time in telling they have found something that makes sense, this is more secure than just using a text. The reversed image may not be identical to the original image because the system is chaotic.  A small error in an image can lead to completely missing the correct image.

http://plus.maths.org/content/captcha-chaos
Paper (unpublished in peer reviewed journal)

14th April 2011 Ants go Home

Ants use a combination of vector addition and root mean square to find their way home.

When they move they estimate the direction (from the sun) and their distance travelled (how many steps). They add these vectors to always have a "home that way" vector.  Unfortunately small errors in either the distance or direction could lead to the ant not being home when she thinks she is.  What happens then?

An ant learns the appearance of the environment around the home.  Her eyesight is low resolution so she can not easily recognise home in the same way as we can by high resolution appearance, plus her environment is mostly trees and more trees.What she does is processes each new image in comparison to these images she has of home.  She does the equivalent of a root mean square of the difference between the pixels in the new image compared with one of her stock images. She moves, and recalculates. If the value is tending towards zero, she continues in that direction. If not, she tries a different route. When the value is zero, she is home.

http://plus.maths.org/content/finding-way-home

13th April 2011 Duck Reproduction

Duck sperm has antibacterial properties. The ability of the sperm to kill E. coli is higher in ducks with brighter beaks. In humans, E. coli harms sperm. [Source:   Discoblog]

A drake's penis is spiral. It is inverted inside the duck but it takes just 1/3 second to evert it. Instead of blood, lymph fluid is used to extend it. [Source: Duck Penises]

A duck's vagina is also spiral but it twists the other way! It also has pockets.  This may be so that the duck can control which drake fertilises the eggs.

Concerning spiral penises, pigs  have a penis with a corkscrew on the end. The sow's cervix also is formed as  a corkscrew. Unlike the ducks, both have the same orientation (left handed).  In order for the boar to be simulated to ejaculate, the penis has to lock into the cervix. This locking prevents backflow of semen.

13th April 2011 Asteroid Belt

The Main Asteroid Belt shown in White

The main asteroid belt lies between Mars and Jupiter. It consists of asteroids from a few centimetres in diameter to the size of a dwarf planet.

Due to strong gravitational forces, it is impossible for a planet or large protoplanet to survive between Mars and Jupiter without being ripped apart. So the asteroid belt might be the remains of a planet which has been ripped apart.

Discovery of the First Asteroid

Many calculations were done in the early 18th century to calculate the number of asteroids and accurate answers were found. However, actually seeing the asteroids was a more difficult problem, and it took until 1st January, 1801 for Guiseppe Piazzi to find the first one. He wrote in his diary

"The light was a little faint, and of the colour of Jupiter, but similar to many others which generally are reckoned of the eighth magnitude. Therefore I had no doubt of its being any other than a fixed star. In the evening of the second I repeated my observations, and having found that it did not correspond either in time or in distance from the zenith with the former observation, I began to entertain some doubts of its accuracy. I conceived afterwards a great suspicion that it might be a new star. The evening of the third, my suspicion was converted into certainty, being assured it was not a fixed star. Nevertheless before I made it known, I waited till the evening of the fourth, when I had the satisfaction to see it had moved at the same rate as on the preceding days."

and in a letter to astronomer Barnaba Oriani of Milan he made his suspicions known in writing:

"I have announced this star as a comet, but since it is not accompanied by any nebulosity and, further, since its movement is so slow and rather uniform, it has occurred to me several times that it might be something better than a comet. But I have been careful not to advance this supposition to the public."

Piazzi called his discovery Ceres, and for 50 years it was known as the 8th planet in the Solar System.  It is the largest of the asteroids and is now classified as a dwarf planet. It is the only dwarf planet in the asteroid belt. Its diameter is about 950 km and contains 32% of the belt's total mass.

Ceres - taken by Hubble

The following image from NASA shows the comparison of sizes between Earth, the moon and Ceres.

From Wikimedia Commons

First Ten Asteroids Discovered

Sizes of the first ten Asteroids to be discovered compared to the Earth's Moon, all to scale. 

Name	Size	Mass % of belt mass   (x 1020  kg)	Discovery date	Discoverer
1 Ceres	950 km diameter	32% 9.43 ± 0.07	1st January, 1801	Guiseppe Piazzi
2 Pallas	530-565km diameter	7% 2.11 ± 0.26	28th March, 1802	Heinrich Olbers
3 Juno	320×267×200 km	1% 0.267	1st September, 1804	Karl Ludwig Harding
4 Vesta	578×560×458 km	9% 2.67 ± 0.02	29th March, 1807	Heinrich Olbers
5 Astraea	167×123×82 km	0.1% 0.029	8th December, 1845	Karl Ludwig Hencke
6 Hebe	205×185×170 km	0.4% 0.128	1st July, 1847	Karl Ludwig Hencke
7 Iris	225×190×190 km	0.4% 0.136	13th August, 1847	John Russell Hind
8 Flora	136×136×113 km	0.1% 0.043	18th October, 1847	John Russell Hind
9 Metis	235×195×140 km	0.5% 0.147 ± 0.020	25th April, 1848	Andrew Graham
10 Hygiea	500×385×350 km	3% 0.885	12th April, 1849	Annibale de Gasparis

365 Days of Astronomy

12th April 2011 Alcoholic Tendencies

Researchers have found that there is a link between people reporting a 'buzz' from a drink in a blind study and those who later have a tendency to develop an alcohol use disorder.  This suggests that perhaps there is a genetic disposition to overuse of alcohol, and that it may help to be able to warn people early on that they could develop problems


Foretelling Drinking Future From a Buzz

12th April 2011 Links between Science & Arts

In many instances, art has influenced science. Many inventors have artistic training. The majority of Nobel laureates are active in some sort of artistic expression as adults such as singing, dancing, woodwork, writing poetry or literature, and so on.

Here are some examples of the influence art has had on science.

Cell phone encryption

This is based on frequency hopping which was invented by the composer George Antheil in collaboration with the actress Hedy Lamarr.

TV & Computer Screens

Georges Seurat - La Parade (1889) - detail showing pointillism technique

The combination of red, blue and green dots was an innovation by a collaboration of a series of painter-scientists (e.g., American physicist Ogden Rood and German Nobel laureate Wilhelm Ostwald) and post-impressionist artists such as Seurat.

Programmable Devices & Digital Images

Woven silk portrait of Joseph Marie Jacquard, based on a painting of Jacquard by Claude Bonnefond (1796–1860); woven by Michel-Marie Carquillat (1803–1884)

The first programmable device was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard to control the looms that made his tapestries. Babbage, who owned a portrait of Jacquard woven in silk and requiring 24000 punch cards to produce, was inspired to use the same technique in his analytical engine.

Jacquard also made the first digital images out of black and white threads.

Computer Chips

Computer chips are made using three art techniques: etching, silk screen printing, and photolithography.

Satellite Images

Giovanni Baglione, 1602, Amor sacro e amor profano (chiaroscuro)

Data from NASA and NSA satellites is enhanced using artistic techniques such as chiaroscuro (strong contrast between light and dark) and false coloring (the Fauvists - using colours other than those which are seen naturally) so important information is more easily seen.

Camouflage

A photograph of two model ducks, one countershaded and the other camouflaged 

Camouflage was invented by an American painter, Abbot Thayer. He wrote a book called 'Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom: An Exposition of the Laws of Disguise Through Color and Pattern; Being a Summary of Abbott H. Thayer’s Disclosures' which was published by Macmillan in 1909 and reissued in 1918. It influenced the use of camouflage in World War I.

Suturing

When the French President, Sadi Carnot, was attacked with a knife, his large abdominal veins were severed. Surgeons of the day concerned they were too large to be reconnected.  Following this Alexis Carrel set about working out how to suture blood vessels.  In order to do this, he took lessons from embroiders and a lace maker. He came up with a method called triangulation, for which he became a Nobel laureate.

Pacemaker

A pacemaker is a modification of a musical metronome.  (Couldn't find any more info on this.)

Notation

A system of notation developed by a dance theorist, Noa Eshkol and architecture professor, Avraham Wachman is used in dance, physical therapy, animal behaviour and early diagnosis of autism.

Stent

Through origami, insights have brought forward technological advances involved in car airbag deployment and stent implants.

Bridge

Bridges are often designed by artistically trained engineers.

Artists

Often inventors are artistically trained.

Samuel Morse

The Chapel of the Virgin at Subiaco - Samuel Finley Breese Morse

Samuel Morse, a prominent artist, invented the telegraph.  When he was painting a portrait of Gilbert du Motier, his wife was taken ill.  By the time Morse received notice of this and rushed home, she was already dead. Because of this, he moved on from painting to developing a means of long distance communication.

Robert Fulton

Fulton Nautilus submarine. 19th century drawing

Robert Fulton, who invented the steam ship, was also a prominent artist.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell, from his knowledge of sound and understanding of music, conjectured that it would be possible to transmit multiple messages over the same wire at the same time, if they were at different pitches.  This idea led to the invention of the telephone. 

Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes led to the invention of a new kind of chemical nanoparticle called Buckminsterfullerene or buckyball. They also aid understanding of cell and virus structure which  permits new biomedical insights, and thus the creation of new medicines.

Kenneth Snelson

Kenneth Snelson is an artist who works with physical forces in 3D. His work on tensegrity has applications in biology.

Art of Science Learning Blog
Bioephemera