"The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome"
"The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome"
Dark matter
Not long after physicists on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN laboratory discovered the Higgs boson, CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer was asked, “What’s next?” One of the top priorities he named: figuring out dark matter.
Dark matter is five times more prevalent than ordinary matter. It seems to exist in clumps around the universe, forming a kind of scaffolding on which visible matter coalesces into galaxies. The nature of dark matter is unknown, but physicists have suggested that it, like visible matter, is made up of particles.
Dark matter shows up periodically in the media, often when an experiment has spotted a potential sign of it. But we are still waiting for that Nobel-Prize-triggering moment when scientists know they finally have it.
Here are four facts to get you up to speed on one of the most exciting topics in particle physics
Why You Can’t Draw Things Even If You Know What They Look Like
Why can’t you just draw the things you’ve seen? Because no matter how carefully you’ve observed things during your life, you haven’t been observing them the right way. Here’s an experiment that shows how looking at the world isn’t enough to allow you to recreate it.
The Challenge
Most of the people reading this have read a few comics during their lives. Even the most casual observer knows a few animated characters. Think of a simple one, and one that you’ve seen your whole life. Think of Mickey Mouse’s head, or Homer Simpson’s face. Now pick up a pencil and a sheet of scratch paper and try to draw it. Really try, just for two minutes. Do it from memory.
I’m guessing it didn’t go so well. This isn’t just a matter of technical inability. Although no novice would be able to recreate a professional animator’s work, the lines involved aren’t complicated. Put a drawing of one of those characters in front of the average person, and although their work would be shaky, it would resemble the original well enough. The problem is, when drawing from memory, memory fails us. We can’t think of how the lines fit together.
It’s also not a tedious example of the famous Holmesian quote, “You see, but you do not observe”. Most of us have never counted the number of steps that lead up to our front door, and we wouldn’t notice if the number were altered. But put a bad knock-off of a certain cartoon character in front of us, and we know that they look “off” the instant we set eyes on them. People do “observe” these characters. Although we can’t draw them, we do accurately remember what they look like. It’s not a trick. We both do and don’t remember some of the most famous icons in our lives, depending on how we are trying to remember them.
The Experiment
One experiment brings this into focus. Subjects sat in a chair while they were given a series of guided tours along three paths in a virtual city. The subject experienced each path differently. They used a joystick to move along one path, guided by a researcher who gave them directions. To explore another path, they just sat back and watched as they moved through the city. The last tour involved no motion; the subjects were only shown a series of snapshots that took them from one location to another. Although it was possible to understand how one would move in virtual space to get from one snapshot area to the next, the participants didn’t actually move.
At the end of the experiment, the participants were tested. The first test was pretty simple: point to the way “back” from the end of the path to the beginning. Then there was a test of recognition — did people recognize the scenes they’d just walked through? Finally, the participants were asked to draw the route of the path. No matter how they moved through the path, the participants did equally well at pointing their way back and recognizing where they’d been. When it came to sketching the path, the snapshot path was hopelessly inaccurate compared to the other two sketched paths.
Although the participants knew every step of the way, and although they knew the rough direction they’d gone, they weren’t able to recreate the path in their head. When they had been drawing the other paths, they were doing it by recreating the actual motion of the trip in their head. They weren’t able to do the same with the snapshot path, so when they were asked to trace the path, their mind went blank. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t remember the path they’d been on. The problem was that they didn’t have the specific memory they needed in order to do the task.
Paperless Drawing
This is why we can’t recreate drawings even if we can remember them. When we rely on memory to complete a task we need a memory that pertains to that specific task. Passively remembering how something looks, and actively remembering how to reconstruct it are two separate processes.
What’s more interesting about the experiment is the fact that we don’t necessarily need to practice the “drawing” part of drawing in order to learn to draw. The participants in the experiment didn’t need to actively make their way through a scene to remember what the path looked like. This could mean that we don’t need to actually put pen to paper and practice the physical motion in order to improve our drawing skills. All we need to do is imagine how we would recreate the characters while we look at them.
This might be the basis for a cool, if time-consuming, experiment. There are plenty of people attending art classes. It would be interesting if one such class were split into two groups; one group that actually practiced art, and one group that had a teacher who led them through virtual exercises on how to “see” like an artist, without ever putting pencil to paper. Obviously, the physical process of sketching is a skill like anything else, and the people who were physically drawing would have an advantage. It would be cool to see how the virtual students stacked up against the practical ones. This experiment proves that we need to learn to draw with our mind, as well as our fingers, but could we learn to draw with our mind alone?
[source]
Science Writing
Scientific Journal Editor
Science Policy
Science Outreach
Science Education for Non-scientists
Teacher (high school, community/technical college, small liberal arts colleges)
Non-tenured Faculty (often involves managing multiple projects, more administrative work)
Science Program Administration (such as program recruitment, program design, providing student & career support services)
Facility Director (i.e. microscopy, flow cytometry, animal model development, sequencing, mass spectrometry, cell line development, etc centers to support university scientists)
Public Health Program Analyst
Biostatistician
Patent Agent/Attorney
Industry Project Manager
Lab Manager
Research Center Director (i.e., managing multiple Principle Investigators and scientists with a common goal of developing therapies for a particular disease)
Clinical Diagnostician
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Regulatory Affairs Specialist (i.e. working to get new drugs approved for a company)
Regulatory Enforcement (i.e. working for the FDA for drug approval, analyzing food quality, evaluating livestock health)
Technical Support Specialist (for laboratory products)
Investment Analyst (into biotech companies)
Entrepreneur (starting your own company around a product/invention)
Medical/Science Ethicist (such as for IRB or IACUC boards)Further information/resources
myIDP: To explore career options based on your interests and skills. Highly recommended for grad students.
Science Careers: From the publishers of Science, dedicated to all things related to building a career in science
Naturejobs Career toolkit: Advice on CVs/resumes, interviews, networking, career advancement and optionsThis is a great list to start with. Definitely worth looking into for those who are interested in working in science/STEM but are on-the-fence, or just don’t know what’s out there. Hopefully some of you find this useful or can even add a few things to it!
We just learned about another awesome artist who makes things that look like other things. Brett Kern is an artist and teacher based in Elkins, West Virginia who created a wonderful series of ceramic sculptures that look exactly like inflatable dinosaurs, astronauts, and balloons.
Visit Brett Kern’s website to view more of his bright and playful artwork.
[via Gessato]
CERAMIC?!
CERAMIC?!?!?
CERAMIC!?!?!?!??!?!
(Source: archiemcphee)
Spiral Galaxy NGC 5033
Magnificent island universe NGC 5033 lies some 40 million light-years away in the well-trained northern constellation Canes Venatici. This telescopic portrait reveals striking details of dust lanes winding near the galaxy’s bright core and majestic but relatively faint spiral arms. Speckled with pink star forming regions and massive blue star clusters, the arms span over 100,000 light-years, similar in size to our own spiral Milky Way. A well-studied example of the class of Seyfert active galaxies, NGC 5033 has a core that is very bright and variable. The emission is likely powered by a supermassive black hole. The bright nucleus and rotational center of the galaxy also seem to be slightly offset, suggesting NGC 5033 is the result of an ancient galaxy merger.Image Credit & Copyright: Adam Block, Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter, University of Arizona
Razorbill
(Alca torda)
the Razorbill is a sea bird of the family Alcidae (auks), that can be found in most Northern Atlantic waters ranging from Iceland down to New England and France (with Iceland holding most of their population). These birds spend most of their lives at sea only coming to land once a year to breed on coastal cliffs. Like most other auks they are Black with a white underside and white patches on their bill. They are fair sized bird with an 8 in wingspan. like many other birds Razorbills mate for live and only rear one young at a time. They hunt by diving for small schooling fish, using their streamlined bodies to propel quickly through the water. they are currently protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Phylogeny
Animalia-Chordata-Aves-Charadriiformes-Lari-Alcidae-Alca-torda
Astrophotography processed by Oliver Czernetz using HLA (Hubble Legacy Archive) data:
NGC1805; The Heart Nebula, NGC602; a young, bright open cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud, and NGC2264; the Cone Region
(Source: kn207)
(Source: fernsandmoss)
New print up on etsy!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/175014726/the-anatomy-of-a-flower-art-print
This flower anatomy print makes a great gift for any botanist or garden enthusiast! Even if you don’t have a green thumb you can hang this little plant up instead.
• paper size 8.5in X 17in
• printed on Aurora Fine Art Natural (100% cotton rag, acid-free, matte)
• printed with Epson archival pigment inks
(Source: etsy.com)
