The Guild of Scientific Troubadours

Scientists make music #2: Live coding.

BBC News reveals the latest tactic in the war to make live electronica performances a little more of the moment: Have the musicians write their sound-making code on the fly:

Live coding has its own, custom-made programming languages, some of which are as simple as a 1970s computer interface, with lines of code entered onto a black screen.

Others might be more visual, with musical directions encoded as shapes that are arranged freehand on a screen.

“It might not be any easier to understand but it’s visually more interesting than just text,” Dave says.

“But then there’s also something nice about the purity of just having lines of code.”

Chris is a fan of the more visual software, but he follows the live coding purist’s tradition of starting off with a blank screen.

As he adds shapes corresponding to sounds, filling them in with numbers that finely tune their timbre or frequency, his stage fright is not in evidence.

He says that live coding is like building the computer programs that are commonly used to make electronic music; it is “one more level of abstraction” from the music itself.

…

“I’ve done all sorts of things with a computer and a stage, but [live coding] feels like it’s really native to computing,” says Matthew [Yee-King].

“It’s like a virtuosic exploration of the guts of the machine, in the same way that a piano virtuoso engages with the machine they’re using.”

Entered on 31 August 2009 at 6:44 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Barents Sea in Bloom (BarentsSea_TMO_2009231)

This image, a recent Picture of the Day at NASA’s Earth Observatory, takes a big view of something very small – lots and lots and lots of single-celled organisms multiplying in the waters off northern Russia.

This is a bloom of phytoplankton, microscopic plants that float around all day turning sunlight into energy. This particular kind of phytoplankton does something else interesting – it creates calcium carbonate armor for itself. Coccolithophores do this by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Since carbon dioxide is one of the main gases responsible for global warming, this could be a very useful trick indeed.

Especially when you get enough coccolithophores that you can see them from space.

It’s also where chalk comes from. Teeny-tiny limestone armor plates.

Entered on 30 August 2009 at 6:27 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

“The Laughing Gnome” isn’t enough, I guess.

Well, this seems a little misguided – or maybe absolutely brilliant – but a psychological researcher (and guitarist) has created the ideal David Bowie song. Scientifically:

“I looked at the link between the language used and how long Bowie’s albums had spent in the charts,” said Dr Troop.

“I found that the songs with positive emotion and social processes were more successful than the songs that talked about mortality.”

…

During the next academic year, Dr Troop plans to use some of the theories applied in this research to work with his psychology students to look at how different kinds of word usage can affect mood and other health outcomes, with a particular emphasis on song writing.

Entered on 28 August 2009 at 6:02 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Electricity in my veins.

Surgeons are readying their Frankenstein-style electrodes, NBC says, in preparation for building new blood vessels with the power (and shape) of lightning:

The artificial organs begin as clear blocks of biodegradable plastic about the size of an inch-thick stack of Post-It notes. An electron beam fills the block with electricity, then the scientists drive nails into either end of the plastic block.

With each strike of the hammer, lightning streaks through the block and exits through the nail, leaving tiny tunnels in its wake. “It’s pretty spectacular,” said Jayaraman. “It looks just like lightning bolts.”

These tunnels are remarkably similar to the capillary system inside the human body. At their largest size, where the nails are driven in, the lightning induced tunnels are about the same size as veins and arteries. In the middle of the block, the tunnels are smaller, about the same size as capillaries.

The tunnels also connect with each other; fluid that goes in one side comes out the other. The streaking of the lightning might seem random, but it penetrates all areas of the block, ensuring an adequate blood supply to the entire organ.

Entered on 27 August 2009 at 6:06 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Art for health.

PhysOrg brightens up the future of health care with the healing power of art:

Nanda, who has a doctorate in architecture with a specialization in health-care systems and design, says scientific studies show that art can aid in the recovery of patients, shorten hospital stays and help manage pain. But she says it has to be the right art — vivid paintings of landscapes, friendly faces and familiar objects can lower blood pressure and heart rate, while abstract pictures can have the opposite effect.

Nanda and two university professors did a study at Houston’s St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital using two types of art. In the first group were images that had been proven to calm patients, including green landscapes, water scenes, cultural artifacts and emotionally expressive pictures of people. The second group contained abstract pieces by artists such as Vincent van Gogh. When asked which they preferred, most patients chose images from the first group.

Nanda says one theory is that abstract art allows patients to project their own anxieties onto the image.

Entered on 26 August 2009 at 6:09 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Deadly plastic ocean.

Discovery brings up the grim possibility that we’re all doomed to die in an invisible toxic wave:

Patterns in ocean currents create conglomerations of swirling trash that have received a burst of attention recently. The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for one, is a mound of waste, mostly plastic, that’s about twice the size of Texas. It lies some 1,000 miles off the west coast between California and Hawaii.

In Japan, Saido said, up to 150,000 tons of plastic wash on shore each year. Much of it is Styrofoam, a type of polystyrene plastic.

In their lab, Saido and colleagues used a new chemical technique to simulate the decomposition of polystyrene plastic in the oceans at 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). The process produced some potentially toxic chemicals, including bisphenol A (BPA) and PS oligomer.

“Evan at 30 degrees Celsius, it decomposes,” said Saido’s colleague Yoichi Kodera, who also spoke at the conference. “In natural conditions, the tide comes in and sunlight heats the plastics,” he said, which should only enhance degradation.

As it cooks in the sun, the Garbage Patch is oozing deadly stuff into our beaches. And the local landfill might be doing the same to our drinking water.

Entered on 25 August 2009 at 6:01 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Walk, don’t crawl.

Scientific American resets my priorities (or at least my metaphors) with anthropological research. You think in order to walk, you gotta crawl first? Not really:

According to anthropologist David Tracer of the University of Colorado at Boulder, babies of the Au hunter-gatherers of Pa­pua New Guinea do not go through a crawling stage. Instead their parents and other caregivers carry them until they can walk. Yet Au children do not appear to suffer any ill effects from skipping this phase. In a presentation given to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Chicago this past April, Tracer argued that, in fact, not crawling may be entirely normal and possibly even adaptive.
…

Citing a study of Bangladeshi children showing that crawling significantly increases the risk of contracting diarrhea, Tracer proposes that carrying infants limits their exposure to ground pathogens. It also protects them from predators. He therefore contends that the crawling stage is a recent invention….

Entered on 24 August 2009 at 22:19 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Song: Close Your Eyes

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

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Scary music is spookier with eyes shut “, New Scientist, 28 July 2009, as used in the post “Listen with your eyes closed.”

ABSTRACT: It’s hard to resist songs about studies about music. Especially creepy music. I’d originally thought of doing a mash-up with this song and Lux Aeterna” (and maybe “Jamming” for good measure), but had to make one of those time-based decisions. Quicker to whack in a saz soloist. Just listen with your eyes closed.

Entered on 23 August 2009 at 18:46 in the Songs file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

Science Art: Pioneer F/G Jupiter Missions, 1970.

^{Click to embiggen.}

A gorgeous vintage diagram of NASA’s deep space probe’s trajectory.

The NASA image archive page says:

This image, drawn in 1970, is an artist’s rendering of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft trajectory, with the planets labeled and a list of the instruments that were intended to be flown. Before the use of computer animation, artists were hired by JPL and NASA to depict a spacecraft in flight, for use as a visual aid to promote the project during development.

…

At Jupiter, the experiments of Pioneer were used to examine the environmental and atmospheric characteristics of the giant planet. Pioneer was also the vital precursor to all future flights to the outer solar system. It determined that a spacecraft could safely fly through the asteroid belt. It also measured the intensity of Jupiter’s radiation belt so that NASA could design future Jupiter (and other outer planets) orbiters.

Pioneer left the solar system in 1983, and was still sending signals home as late as 2001.

Entered on 23 August 2009 at 6:38 in the Science Art file | Care to make an observation? |  Print

By definition, a crush must hurt…

The Telegraph provides insight into the genuine pain of a broken heart:

Psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles say the human body has a gene which connects physical pain sensitivity with social pain sensitivity.

The findings back the common theory that rejection ‘hurts’ by showing that a gene regulating the body’s most potent painkillers – mu-opioids – is involved in socially painful experiences too.

Their study indicates that a variation in the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1), often associated with physical pain, is related to how much social pain a person feels in response to social rejection.

…

Co-author Baldwin Way said: “These findings suggest that the feeling of being given the cold shoulder by a romantic interest or not being picked for a schoolyard game of basketball may arise from the same circuits.”

Entered on 21 August 2009 at 6:15 in the Science file | Care to make an observation? |  Print