The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Spiny eyes. With legs and mouths.

LiveScience illuminates a mystery I’m not sure I even knew existed – how is it that sea urchins can see without eyes:

Although sea urchins don’t have any problems avoiding predators or finding comfortable dark corners to hide in, they don’t have eyes. The question then is how they see.

Genetic analysis of sea urchins has revealed they have light-sensitive molecules, mostly in their tube feet and in tiny stalked appendages found in among their spines. As such, “it looks like the entire surface of their bodies are acting as one big eye,” said researcher Sönke Johnsen, a marine biologist at Duke University.

Entered on 9 February 2010 at 6:06 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

SCRUBBED.

So much for that final night shot: low clouds over the launch site.

So not only have the moon program and Ares rockets been shelved, but now the ground crew a/ didn’t get to light the big firecracker and b/ have to come to work at the same time the Super Bowl kicks off.

Entered on 7 February 2010 at 15:07 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Opportunity at Concepcion Crater.

This image was ganked mercilessly from the brilliant Road to Endeavour blog.

That celebration of the Mars rovers is put together by the same person who appears to do something called Astropoetry which looks very, very intriguing. Must investigate this project.

But for now, I’ll just look at this image, beamed from the surface of Mars. Crusty rocks, facing north into the sun. They have secrets to tell.

[Found via.]

Entered on 7 February 2010 at 6:28 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Last chance to see.

On 4:39 Sunday morning, go out and turn to face Cape Canaveral. It’s your last chance to ever see a space shuttle launch.

Last. Chance.

EDIT TO ADD: Space.com has video of what to expect. It’ll be visible from an area three times the size of Texas.

Entered on 5 February 2010 at 20:24 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Ships on Titan.

Well, this is a news item from before this week’s NASA budget came out. Think of it as a kind of desperate inspiration, perhaps, from the BBC. But it could be… maybe, somehow… that we’ll someday sail a boat on Titan’s methane seas:

The Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) has already been under study for about two years. It is envisaged as a relatively low-cost endeavour – in the low $400m range.

It could launch in January 2016, and make some flybys of Earth and Jupiter to pick up the gravitational energy it would need to head straight at the Saturnian moon for a splash down in June 2023.

The scientists have a couple of seas in mind for their off-world maritime research vessel. Ligeia Mare and Kraken Mare are both about 500km across.

…

“If we have models that will work on Earth and on Titan then we can be much more confident that those models understand the fundamentals of what’s going on,” explained [team member Dr Ralph Lorenz] from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

“The photogenic appeal and the mystique of exploring a sea on another world speak for themselves, but there is a genuine practical application to do with the science that will help us address problems here on Earth.”

Just so there’s no confusion, this expedition has rather abruptly become highly unlikely – the Cassini Saturn mission has already been cut short.

Entered on 5 February 2010 at 6:10 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Hydrogen: a different perspective.

Yeah, so I kind of really want this poster now.

Entered on 4 February 2010 at 6:20 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Running barefoot.

ScienceDaily keeps up with the latest research into the health benefits of running without shoes:

[S]ays Daniel E. Lieberman, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and co-author of a paper appearing this week in the journal Nature: “By landing on the middle or front of the foot, barefoot runners have almost no impact collision, much less than most shod runners generate when they heel-strike. Most people today think barefoot running is dangerous and hurts, but actually you can run barefoot on the world’s hardest surfaces without the slightest discomfort and pain. All you need is a few calluses to avoid roughing up the skin of the foot. Further, it might be less injurious than the way some people run in shoes.”

…

“Running barefoot or in minimal shoes is fun but uses different muscles,” says Lieberman. “If you’ve been a heel-striker all your life you have to transition slowly to build strength in your calf and foot muscles.”

In the future, he hopes, the kind of work done in this paper can not only investigate barefoot running, but can provide insight into how to better prevent the repetitive stress injuries that afflict a high percentage of runners today.

I am now picturing spas in Beverly Hills offering barefoot running workshops for clients to work on technique. Dr. Lieberman even has a site dedicated to barefooting. With videos.

Entered on 3 February 2010 at 8:20 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

SONG: A Tiny Golden Mean

SONG: “A Tiny Golden Mean” _{(To download: double right-click & “Save As”)}

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Golden Ratio Discovered in Quantum World: Hidden Symmetry Observed for the First Time in Solid State Matter,” ScienceDaily, 7 Jan 2010, as used in the post “A tiny golden mean”.

ABSTRACT: Since the golden mean is the ratio that supposedly underlies our sense of beauty – the thing that describes the relationships that look or sound “right” to our brains – it was hard to resist this one. I already knew one song (written by this guy) called “Golden Mean,” so it was kind of interesting coming at the thing from a different angle. It seems strange to me that elementary school kids are taught 3.14… but not 1.618…, but I guess that’s human beings all over. Wheels are more important than portraits.

Obviously, this is not the day when this song should have been done (happy Imbolc, by the way). I’m in a new house, on the one hand, but also have a new Christmas condenser microphone, on the other, so all the flaws can shine through with crystal clarity. Yikes! There’s a borrowed banjo in there, and a couple synthy basses, but for the most part it’s the magic microphone sitting there with me playing guitar and singing the decimal places live in the room. I’ve never been mathematically minded, so numbers have a kind of mystique for me, I guess, which is where that chorus came from. The chords for the verses are *sort of* in the golden ratio (I-IV-V, that standard blues progression), but the choruses are a little different. I kind of felt like there should have been more of a mention of frozen magnetic atoms of cobalt niobate, or a diagram of E8, or at least a use of the phrase “quantum critical,” but the words kept going back to the simple fact that there’s a phi inside the atomic world. That’s pretty cool. (Oh, and the bridge about how the golden mean determines where most pop songs’ bridges are located – that was partially inspired by Douglas Hofstadter, who I’ve been rereading lately.)

So, here’s a song about it. Next up, a penitential cover. Mea culpa.

Entered on 2 February 2010 at 6:42 in the Songs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Grant B on Pocket: Remixing Danny Seim

This is not explicitly a song about science (although it’s getting harder and harder for me to draw that line), but I’ve got a remix coming out as part of the fascinating project that Pocket has been doing – releasing an album of collaborations with all-stars (like Robyn Hitchcock, Steve Kilbey of The Church and Craig Wedren of Shudder to Think) a single at a time, with the singles being packages with remixes by all sorts of other folks.

Including me.

I am not a techno DJ. Anyone who has spent a few minutes listening through the song archive here could tell you that. I do, however, have access to a banjo and slide guitar, I’ve got some editing software, and I’m told I have a knack for loneliness.

So I did something to a track by Pocket with Danny Seim of Menomena and Lackthereof. It’s not like the other remixes. It’s not like Danny Seim. It’s not like what I do here. But it is sort of like all those things put together.

So, go check it out and hear for yourself, either via Pocket or directly from Other Music. I thought it was pretty darn good.

Entered on 1 February 2010 at 19:50 in the Guild Affairs, Music file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Extinct bird alive and well.

That, according to the Telegraph, is the good news. The bad news is that it’s in war-torn Afghanistan:

The birds were then spotted again in June last year by workers from the Wildlife Conservation Society of Afghanistan.

Researchers suggest the birds were released into Afghanistan when they were bred there during the 1930s.

University of Gothenburg Associate Professor Urban Olsson said the area of Afghanistan was known to have been home to the rare birds but the latest research had provided conclusive proof, which they have released today (Jan 25).

“We had pinpointed north-eastern Afghanistan as an area where the large-billed reed warbler were probably bred during the 1930s,” he said.

“When we heard the mysterious birdsong we realised that we were on the trail of an ornithological sensation.”

Apparently the biggest threat they face isn’t from bombs or guns. It’s from people cutting down all the trees to use for firewood.

Entered on 1 February 2010 at 6:04 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print