The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Jacket makes movies feelies.

The IEEE (what used to be the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) reports in Spectrum about a strange new entertainment breakthrough that combines neurology, electronics and fashion. Scientists with Philips have designed a jacket that makes movies more moving… by moving:

The jacket contains 64 independently controlled actuators distributed across the arms and torso…..

“We want people to feel Bruce Lee’s anxiety about whether he will get out alive,” says the Philips researcher. The jacket, responding to signals encoded in the DVD or to a program designed to control the jacket on the fly, can do a host of things, such as “causing a shiver to go up the viewer’s spine and creating the feeling of tension in the limbs.” During the fight scene, says Lemmens, the jacket will even create a pulsing on the wearer’s chest to simulate the kung fu master’s elevated heartbeat.

You can read more about the haptics jacket and similar touching technology as presented at World Haptics 2009.

Entered on 31 March 2009 at 6:21 in the Science file | 1 Observation |  Print

Moon Flowers.

Peggy Lee, Santana and Hugh Lofting all predicted, in their own ways, what MSNBC’s Cosmic Log is reporting as news… about Paragon Space Development Corp’s ambitious plan to grow flowers on the moon:

Paragon’s “Lunar Oasis” would piggyback on a lunar lander currently being developed by Odyssey Moon to vie for a share of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. Details of the partnership are to be publicized Friday during a news conference at Paragon’s headquarters in Tucson, Ariz.

To win the prize, Odyssey Moon would have to get its lander/rover craft on the moon’s surface by the end of 2014. Paragon is working with Odyssey Moon on the lander design and its thermal control system as well as the mini-greenhouse.

That’s engineering as poetry.

Entered on 29 March 2009 at 14:48 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Ambystoma maculatum by John D. Willson

A spotted salamander, spotted in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

Photo from the USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative.

Entered on 29 March 2009 at 6:07 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

We’re not doing science right.

As if we needed someone to tell us about it, Science Daily informs us Americans that we’re failing at basic scientific literacy:

Despite its importance to economic growth, environmental protection, and global health and energy issues, scientific literacy is currently low among American adults. According to the national survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences:

• Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
• Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
• Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth’s surface that is covered with water.*
• Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.

^{(* The approximately correct answer range for this question was defined as anything between 65% and 75%. Only 15% of respondents answered this question with the exactly correct answer of 70%.)}

Knowledge about some key scientific issues is also low. Despite the fact that access to fresh water is likely to be one of the most pressing environmental issues over the coming years, less than 1% of U.S. adults know what percent of the planet’s water is fresh (the correct answer is 3%). Nearly half didn’t even hazard a guess.

You can take a shot at the basic test yourself over yonder, bottom right of the page.

Entered on 27 March 2009 at 6:49 in the Science file | 1 Observation |  Print

Hurdia victoria: SHRIMPZILLA!

PhysOrg once again brings prehistoric monsters to life:

Although the first fragments were described nearly one hundred years ago, they were assumed to be part of a crustacean-like animal. It was not then realised that other parts of the animal were also in collections, but had been described independently as jellyfish, sea cucumbers and other arthropods. …The last piece of the puzzle was found when the best-preserved specimen turned up in the old collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC. This specimen was first classified as an arthropod in the 1970s and 80s, and then as an unusual specimen of the famous monster predator Anomalocaris.

The new description of Hurdia shows that it is indeed related to Anomalocaris. Like Anomalocaris, Hurdia had a segmented body with a head bearing a pair of spinous claws and a circular jaw structure with many teeth. But it differs from Anomalocaris by the possession of a huge three-part carapace that projects out from the front of the animal’s head.

“This structure is unlike anything seen in other fossil or living arthropods,” says Ph.D. student Allison Daley, who has been studying the fossils for three years as part of her doctoral thesis.

It lived 500 million years ago, and was possibly the ancestor of arthropods – the armored animals that include everything from scorpions to cockroaches.

Entered on 24 March 2009 at 6:45 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

SONG: Visibility

SONG: “Visibility” _{(To download: double right-click & “Save As”)}

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Strange fish has a see-through head”, MSNBC/LiveScience, 23 Feb 2009, as used in the post “Barreleye, I can see inside your head.”

ABSTRACT:
This is a song in the form of a conversation between the Barreleye (Macropinna microstoma, the narrator) and Robin (either Triglidae or Turdus migratorius – it’s ambiguous, although the habitat lends itself to the former). Far be it from your humble guildmaster to compare the world of indie pop to the murky depths of the benthic (or bathypelagic) marine environment, but once the idea asserted itself, it was hard to shake. Plus, I promised a third kind of Robin, an indefatigable online booster and social networking maven found here, that I’d write a song for her. Because she deserves songs. Often, when it comes to self-promotion, I feel like the barreleye must feel around other fish. I mean, sea robins have legs, and they’re not half as strange as the guy with the fishtank on his head. Oh, wait, that fishtank is his head. Has he been watching us the whole time? Should we let on that we’ve noticed him?

Robin does not have a fishtank on her head.

I also feel like I should credit Things in Herds because I was sure I stole the hook from a song of theirs, but I just listened to three of their albums (all that I own), and I can’t find the song. I may have imagined it, but don’t think I did. Anyway, their song (or the one my memory made up by them) didn’t have a toy piano playing that hooky part, and probably wasn’t about deep sea creatures or my friend Robin. It also lacked a hulusi and didn’t have percussion made from samples of my 6-year-old daughter’s voice. It may have made its makers as happy as this one made me. Perhaps it did.

Entered on 23 March 2009 at 6:43 in the Songs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Euproctis chrysorrhoea ugglan, Nordisk familjebok

Euproctis chrysorrhoea, better known as the Browntail moth.

It stings our skin and devastates our farmland, and is the subject of experiments using pheromones as a population control.

Found in a very special category on Wikimedia Commons.

Entered on 22 March 2009 at 6:24 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Electric cars still driving!

The New York Times gives hope for a better drive home with a report on a new approach to electric cars… from the filling station up:

We started from the infrastructure. We came up with an electric car that would have two features that nobody had before. 1) The battery is removable. So if you wanted to go a long distance, you could switch your battery instead of waiting for it to charge for a very long time.

And 2) It was cheaper than gasoline car, not more expensive. Because you didn’t buy the battery. You paid just for the miles and for the car.

Lateral thinking from Shai Agassi of Better Place.

Entered on 20 March 2009 at 21:31 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Guild Salute: Jesse Nesbitt

Creativity comes from limitations, yes?

Jesse Nesbitt is writing and recording 100 songs in 2009.

These are not particularly scientific, but this is certainly a good example of doing things on a schedule and getting them done.

Luckily, he sounds like all the best bits of The Posies and, sometimes Iron & Wine.

Picks thus far: December 24 – “I Was Not Prepared For War,” January 5 – “Tree Stars” and February 15 – “Anonymity.” With many more to come!

Jesse Nesbitt, the Guild salutes you!

Entered on 19 March 2009 at 19:51 in the Music file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Roboctopus!

New Scientist introduces our latest underwater overlords – or at least the blueprints for one – in a story about Italian researchers who’re designing the world’s first robot octopus:

The trouble with today’s remote-controlled subs, says Cecilia Laschi of the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa, is that their large hulls and clunky robot arms cannot reach into the nooks and crannies of coral reefs or the rock formations on ocean floors.

…

“So we are replicating the muscular structure of an octopus by making a robot with no rigid structure – and that is completely new to robotics,” she says.

…

The team plans to mimic the longitudinal muscles with soft silicone rubber interspersed with a type of electroactive polymer (EAP) called a dielectric elastomer. Apply an electric field to this material and it squeezes the silicone, making it shorter.

Video at the link.

Entered on 19 March 2009 at 6:39 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print