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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]