Category Archives: multimodal discourse

Graphic novels for teaching math, physics, and more

I’m going to start with the fun, i.e., “Max the Demon Vs Entropy of Doom”,

Found on Assa Auerbach @AssaAuerbach·Twitter feed: 6:57 AM · Feb 17, 2018 [downloaded from: https://theconversation.com/3-reasons-we-use-graphic-novels-to-teach-math-and-physics-211171]

Engaging introduction to James Clerk Maxwell’s and his thought experiment concerning entropy, “Maxwell’s demon.”

It’s one of the points that Sarah Klanderman and Josha Ho (both from Marian University; Indiana, US) make in their co-authored August 17, 2023 essay (on The Conversation) about using graphic novels to teach STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) topics in the classroom, Note: Links have been removed,

Graphic novels – offering visual information married with text – provide a means to engage students without losing all of the rigor of textbooks. As two educators in math and physics, we have found graphic novels to be effective at teaching students of all ability levels. We’ve used graphic novels in our own classes, and we’ve also inspired and encouraged other teachers to use them. And we’re not alone: Other teachers are rejuvenating this analog medium with a high level of success.

In addition to covering a wide range of topics and audiences, graphic novels can explain tough topics without alienating student averse to STEM – science, technology, engineering and math. Even for students who already like math and physics, graphic novels provide a way to dive into topics beyond what is possible in a time-constrained class. In our book “Using Graphic Novels in the STEM Classroom,” we discuss the many reasons why graphic novels have a unique place in math and physics education. …

Klanderman and Ho share some information that was new to me, from the August 17, 2023 essay, Note: Links have been removed,

Increasingly, schools are moving away from textbooks, even though studies show that students learn better using print rather than digital formats [emphasis mine]. Graphic novels offer the best of both worlds: a hybrid between modern and traditional media.

This integration of text with images and diagrams is especially useful in STEM disciplines that require quantitative reading and data analysis skills, like math and physics.

For example, our collaborator Jason Ho, an assistant professor at Dordt University, uses “Max the Demon Vs Entropy of Doom” to teach his physics students about entropy. This topic can be particularly difficult for students because it’s one of the first times when they can’t physically touch something in physics. Instead, students have to rely on math and diagrams to fill in their knowledge.

Rather than stressing over equations, Ho’s students focus on understanding the subject more conceptually. This approach helps build their intuition before diving into the algebra. They get a feeling for the fundamentals before they have to worry about equations.

After having taken Ho’s class, more than 85% of his students agreed that they would recommend using graphic novels in STEM classes, and 90% found this particular use of “Max the Demon” helpful for their learning. When strategically used, graphic novels can create a dynamic, engaging teaching environment even with nuanced, quantitative topics.

I encourage you to read the essay in its entirety if you have the time and the interest.

Here’s a link to the publisher’s website, a citation for and description of the book along with a Table of Contents, Note: it seems to be available in the UK only,

Using Graphic Novels in the STEM Classroom by William Boerman-Cornell, Josha Ho, David Klanderman, Sarah Klanderman. Published: 30 Nov 2023 Format: Paperback Edition: 1st Extent: 168 [pp?] ISBN: 9781350279186 Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic Illustrations: 5 bw illus. Dimensions: 234 x 156 mm Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Pre-order. Available 30 Nov 2023

Description

This book provides everything STEM teachers need to use graphic novels in order to engage students, explain difficult concepts, and enrich learning. Drawing upon the latest educational research and over 60 years of combined teaching experience, the authors describe the multimodal affordances and constraints of each element of the STEM curriculum. Useful for new and seasoned teachers alike, the chapters provide practical guidance for teaching with graphic novels, with a section each for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. An appendix provides nearly 100 short reviews of graphic novels arranged by topic, such as cryptography, evolution, computer coding, skyscraper design, nuclear physics, auto repair, meteorology, and human physiology, allowing the teacher to find multiple graphic novels to enhance almost any unit. These include graphic novel biographies of Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Alan Turing, Rosalind Franklin, as well as popular titles such as T-Minus by Jim Ottaviani, Brooke Gladstone’s The Influencing Machine, Theodoris Andropoulos’s Who Killed Professor X, and Gene [Luen] Yang’s Secret Coders series.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
Foreword, Jay Hosler
Acknowledgements
1. What Research Tells us about Teaching Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics with Graphic Novels
2. Teaching Life Science and Earth Science with Graphic Novels
3. Teaching Physical Science with Graphic Novels
4. Teaching Technology with Graphic Novels
5. Using Graphic Novels to Teach Engineering
6. Teaching Mathematics with Graphic Novels
7. Unanswered Questions and Concluding Thoughts
Appendix: List of STEM Graphic Novels
References
Notes
Index

Finally, h/t August 20, 2023 news item on phys.org

more-than-human, an art/sci exhibition and series of events starting February 1, 2023

Toronto’s Art/Sci Salon’s January 30, 2023 announcement (received via email) lists information for two organizations, the Onsite Gallery’s events and the Salon’s own events.

Onsite Gallery

This gallery is located in Toronto, Ontario at 199 Richmond St. W. From the homepage, “It is the flagship professional gallery of OCAD [Ontario College of Art and Design] University and an experimental curatorial platform for art, design and new media.”

From the Onsite Gallery ‘more-than-human‘ event page. First, there’s the exhibition (Note 1: I found the gallery’s event page I’m using here more informative than the email announcement; Note 2: I have not included the images featuring the artists and their work),

more-than-human

February 01 to May 13, 2023 

Curated by Jane Tingley 

Core exhibition of the CONTACT Photography Festival 

more-than-human presents media artworks at the intersection of art, science, Indigenous worldviews, and technology that speculatively and poetically use multimodal storytelling as a vehicle for interpreting, mattering, and embodying more-than-human ecologies. The artworks in this exhibition aim to critically and emotionally engage with the important work of decentering the human and rethinking the perspective that sees nature as a lifeless resource for exploitation. Many of the artworks use technological and scientific tools as entry points for witnessing and interacting with these more-than-human worlds, as they help visualize phenomena beyond human sensory perception while nevertheless situating us within them. Combined, the artworks in the show weave a story that tells a tale of symbiosis, intersections, and more-than-human relationality. They incorporate scientific, philosophical, and Indigenous perspectives to create an experiential tapestry that asks the viewer to reconsider, reorient, and rethink relationships with the more-than-human. 

more-than-human Online Exhibition Publication

more-than-human curator and artist 

Jane Tingley is an artist, curator, Director of the SLOlab: Sympoietic Living Ontologies Lab and Associate Professor at York University. Her studio work combines traditional studio practice with new media tools – and spans responsive/interactive installation, performative robotics, and telematically connected distributed sculptures/installations. Her works is interdisciplinary in nature and explores the creation of spaces and experiences that push the boundaries between science and magic, interactivity, and playfulness, and offer an experience to the viewer that is accessible both intellectually and technologically. Using distributed technologies, her current work investigates the hidden complexity found in the natural world and explores the deep interconnections between the human and non-human relationships. As a curator her interests lie at the intersection art, science, and technology with a special interest in collaborative creativity as impetus for innovation and discovery. Recent exhibitions include Hedonistika (2014) at the Musée d’art contemporain (Mtl, CA), INTERACTION (2016) and Agents for Change (2020) at THE MUSEUM (Kitchener, CA). As an artist she has participated in exhibitions and festivals in the Americas, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe – including translife -International Triennial of Media Art at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, Elektra Festival in Montréal (CA) and the Künstlerhause in Vienna (AT). She received the Kenneth Finkelstein Prize in Sculpture (CA), the first prize in the iNTERFACES – Interactive Art Competition (PT). 

more-than-human artists

Ursula Biemann is an artist, author and video essayist. Her artistic practice is research oriented and involves fieldwork from Greenland to Amazonia, where she investigates climate change and the ecologies of oil, ice, forests and water. In her multi-layered videos, she interweaves vast cinematic landscapes with documentary footage, science fiction poetry and academic findings to narrate a changing planetary reality. In 2018, Biemann was commissioned by Museo de Arte, Universidad Nacional de Colombia in the co-creation of a new Indigenous University in the South of Colombia led by the Inga people in which she contributes the online platform Devenir Universidad. Her recent video installation Forest Mind (2021) emerges from this long-term collaboration. She has published numerous books, including Forest Mind (2022) and the audiovisual online monograph Becoming Earth on her ecological video works between 2011-2021. Biemann has exhibited internationally with recent solo exhibitions at MAMAC, Nice and the Centre culturel suisse, Paris. She is appointed Doctor honoris causa in Humanities by the Swedish University Umea, and has received the 2009 Prix Meret Oppenheim, the Swiss Grand Award for Art, and the 2022 Zurich Art Award. 

www.geobodies.org 

Lindsey french (she/they) is a settler artist, educator and writer whose work engages in multi- sensory signaling within ecological and technological systems. She has exhibited widely including at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), the International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago), Pratt Manhattan Gallery (New York), the Miller Gallery for Contemporary Art (Pittsburgh), and SixtyEight Art Institute (Copenhagen). Recent publications include chapters for Ambiguous Territory: Architecture, Landscape, and the Postnatural (Actar, 2022), Olfactory Art and The Political in an Age of Resistance (Routledge, 2021), Why Look at Plants (Brill, 2019), and poetry for the journal Forty-Five. They earned an interdisciplinary BA in Environment, Interaction, and Design (Hampshire College), and an MFA in Art and Technology Studies (School of the Art Institute of Chicago). Newly based in the prairie landscape of Treaty 4 territory in Regina, Saskatchewan, french teaches as an Assistant Professor in Creative Technologies in the Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance at the University of Regina. 

www.lindseyfrench.com 

Grace Grothaus Is a computational media artist whose research explores ecosystemic human and plant relationships in relation to the present global climate crisis and speculative futures. She is interested in art’s potential to foster empathy with more-than-human worlds. Frequently collaborative, Grace works with scientists, engineers, musicians and other visual and performing artists. Her research-creation is expressed as physical computing installations which take place both outdoors or in the gallery and often center around the sensing and visualization of invisible environmental phenomena. Her artworks have been exhibited widely including at the International Symposium of Electronic Art (Barcelona, ES & Durban, SA), Environmental Crisis: Art & Science (London, UK), Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, FR), and the World Creativity Biennale (Rio de Janiero, BR). Grothaus has received numerous awards including from the United States National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Currently she is working towards a PhD in Digital Media from York University where she has been named a VISTA scholar and a Graduate Fellow of Academic Distinction. 

Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning is an interdisciplinary artist and Queen’s National Scholar in Anishinaabe Language, Knowledge, and Culture (ALKC) in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Queen’s University. Manning has expertise in Anishinaabe ontology, mnidoo interrelationality, phenomenology, and art. A member of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation, her primary philosophical influence and source of creativity is her early childhood grounding in Anishinaabe onto- epistemology. She is Principal Investigator of Earthdiver: Land-Based Worlding (MITACS), and Co-Investigator on Pluriversal Worlding with Extended Reality. Manning co-directs the cross- institutional Peripheral Visions Co-Lab (York and Queen’s). She is an affiliate of Revision Centre for Art and Social Justice, and Fellow of The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI). 

Mary Bunch is a media artist, Canada Research Chair, and Associate Professor, Cinema and Media Arts at York University. Through theoretical inquiry and collaborative research creation, Bunch mobilizes queer, feminist, disability and decolonial frameworks to better understand peripheral worldmaking imaginaries in media arts and intermedial performance. She is co-editor of a special issue on Access Aesthetics in Public, Principal Investigator on the research creation project Pluriversal Worlding with Extended Reality (SSHRC Insight) and co-investigator on Earthdiver: Land- Based Worlding (MITACS). Dr Bunch is co-director of the Peripheral Visions Co- Lab, Executive Committee member of Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology, a core member of Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA), a Fellow at the Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, and an Affiliate of Revision Centre for Art and Social Justice. 

Suzanne Morrissette (she/her) (she/her) is an artist, curator, and scholar who is currently based out of Toronto. Her father’s parents were Michif- and Cree-speaking Metis with family histories tied to the Interlake and Red River regions and Scrip in the area now known as Manitoba. Her mother’s parents came from Canadian-born farming families descended from United Empire loyalists and Mennonites from Russia. Morrissette was born and raised in Winnipeg and is a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation. As an artistic researcher Suzanne’s interests include: family and community knowledge, methods of translation, the telling of in-between histories, and practices of making that support and sustain life. Her two recent solo exhibitions, What does good work look like? and translations recently opened in Toronto (Gallery 44) and Montreal (daphne art centre) respectively. Her work has appeared in numerous group exhibitions such as Lii Zoot Tayr (Other Worlds), an exhibition of Metis artists working with concepts of the unknowable, and the group exhibition of audio-based work about waterways called FLOW with imagineNATIVE Film + Media Art Festival. Morrissette holds a PhD from York University in Social and Political Thought. She currently holds the position of Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director for the Criticism and Curatorial Practices and Contemporary Art, Design, and New Media Histories Masters programs at OCAD University. 

www.suzannemorrissette.com 

Joel Ong (PhD, MSc.Bioart) is a media artist whose works connect scientific and artistic approaches to the environment, developed from more than a decade of explorations in sound, installation and socially conscious art. His conceptual explorations revolve around metaphors of distance, connectivity, assiduously reworking this notion of the ‘environment’ – how different tools and scales of observation reveal diverse biotic and abiotic relationalities, and how these continually oscillate between natural and computational worlds. His works have been shown at internationally at the Currents New Media Festival, Nuit Blanche Toronto, Seattle Art Museum, the Gregg Museum of Art and Design, the Penny Stamps Gallery and the Ontario Science Centre etc. Joel is Associate Professor in Computational Arts and Director of Sensorium:The Centre for Digital Arts and Technology at York University, in Toronto, Canada. His research has been funded by such as SSHRC, eCampus Ontario, Women and Gender Equality Canada.   

Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits are Riga and Karlsruhe based artists and co-founders of RIXC Center for New Media Culture in Riga [Latvia], co-curators of RIXC Art and Science Festival, chief-editors of Acoustic Space, as well as co-chairs of recently founded NAIA – Naturally Artificial Intelligence Art association in Karlsruhe, Germany. Together they create visionary and networked artworks – from pioneering internet radio experiments in 1990s, to artistic investigations in electromagnetic spectrum and collaborations with radio astronomers, and more recent “techno-ecological” explorations. Their projects have been nominated (Purvitis Prize 2019, 2021, International Public Arts Award – Euroasia region 2021), awarded (Ars Electronica 1998, Falling Walls – Science Breakthrough 2021) and shown widely including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Latvian National Museum of Arts, House of Electronic Arts in Basel, Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, and other venues, exhibitions and festivals in Europe, US, Canada and Asia. More recently they both also have been lecturers in MIT ACT – Art Culture Technology program (2018-2021), Boston.

Rasa Smite holds a PhD in sociology of media and culture; her thesis Creative Networks. In the Rear-View Mirror of Eastern European History (11) has been published by The Amsterdam Institute for Network Cultures. Currently she is a Professor of New Media Art at Liepaja University, and Senior Researcher at FHNW Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland. 

Raitis Smits holds his doctoral degree in arts, and he is a Professor at the Art Academy of Latvia. In 2017 Raitis was a Fulbright Researcher in the Graduate Center of NYC. 

www.smitesmits.com | www.rixc.org 

Now, for the free public events (From the Onsite Gallery ‘more-than-human‘ event page), Note: Some events are being live streamed,

Opening Reception – Wednesday, February 01 [2023], 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West   

Join us for the public launch of the exhibition, with a land acknowledgement and opening remarks.   

more-than human Artists Panel Discussion Part 1  – Thursday, February 02 [2023], 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.  at Onsite Gallery (199 Richmond Street West) and Live Streamed Online   

Artists Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, Grace Grothaus, Suzanne Morrissette and Lindsey french introduce their works exhibited in more-than-human and engage in a discussion about their practice. Moderated by Jane Tingley.

Register here: https://bit.ly/3G7xJ65

Multiplicities and plurality: Curator Jane Tingley in Conversation with Dr. Karen Houle  – Thursday, March 23 [2023], 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Onsite Gallery, 199 Richmond Street West   

Join Dr Karen Houle for an introductory talk on basic premises of Cartesian humanism followed by an exhibition tour discussion of the artworks in that context with Jane Tingley.   

Register here: https://bit.ly/3ZFhVPI

Screening of Forest Mind followed by Q+A with Ursula Biemann – Friday, April 07 [2023], 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. at Onsite Gallery (199 Richmond Street West) and Live Streamed Online   

Forest Mind (31 minutes) tackles the underlying concepts that distinguish the Indigenous knowledge systems from that of modern science, gauging the limits of rationalism which has dominated Western thinking for the last 200 years.  

Register here: https://bit.ly/3ipAWVC

more-than human Artists Panel Discussion Part 2  – Saturday, April 29 [2023], 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.  at Onsite Gallery (199 Richmond Street West) and Live Streamed Online   

Artists Joel Ong, Jane Tingley, Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Mary Bunch introduce their artworks their works exhibited in more-than-human and engage in a discussion about their practice. Moderated by Lisa Deanne Smith.

Register Here: https://bit.ly/3QwLRsW

Guided Nature and Forest Therapy Walk– Saturday, May 13 [2023], 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.  at High Park, 1873 Bloor Street West  

Join us for a slow paced, sensory-based guided walk that connects you with the healing power of the natural world. Space is limited, advance registration required.   

Registration is limited, free tickets will be released on 1 April [2023] at 12 p.m.: https://bit.ly/3XlyOga

There’s more.

Art/Sci Salon February 28 – May 7, 2023 events

From the January 30, 2023 Art/Sci Salon announcement (received via email), Note: Most of the in-person events take place in Toronto,Ontario,

Mark your calendar for the following events 
(more details coming up soon)

Artsci Dialogues

Ecology, Symbiosis, Human/Plant Relations 

Feb 25 [2023], 3:00-5:00 pm,
The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences
[222 College Street · Toronto, Ontario]
In person and Online

Ethics of Care

March 25 [2023], 3:00-5:00 pm
The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical sciences
In person and Online

Immersive Poetry Performance
Madhur Anand, Karen Houle
animated by Ilze (Kavi) Briede

Apr 5 [2023], 7:30-9:00 pm
The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences

Day at rare Charitable Reserve
Panel with artists and scientists,
Workshop led by Dr. Alice Jarry
Guided walk by rare staff and affiliated scientists 

May 7th [2023], rare Charitable [Research] Reserve

[1679 Blair Rd, Cambridge ON]

Should you be curious, you can view the contents of the email here, as of February 1, 2023 (not sure how long this page will be available).

Future of Being Human: a call for proposals

The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is investigating the ‘Future of Being Human’ and has instituted a global call for proposals but there is one catch, your team has to have one person (with or without citizenship) who’s living and working in Canada. (Note: I am available.)

Here’s more about the call (from the CIFAR Global Call for Ideas: The Future of Being Human webpage),

New program proposals should explore the long term intersection of humans, science and technology, social and cultural systems, and our environment. Our understanding of the world around us, and new insights into individual and societal behaviour, have the potential to provide enormous benefits to humanity and the planet. 

We invite bold proposals from researchers at universities or research institutions that ask new questions about our complex emerging world. We are confronting challenging problems that require a diverse team incorporating multiple disciplines (potentially spanning the humanities, social sciences, arts, physical sciences, and life sciences [emphasis mine]) to engage in a sustained dialogue to develop new insights, and change the conversation on important questions facing science and humanity.

CIFAR is committed to creating a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment. We welcome proposals that include individuals from countries and institutions that are not yet represented in our research community.

Here’s a description, albeit, a little repetitive, of what CIFAR is asking researchers to do (from the Program Guide [PDF]),

For CIFAR’s next Global Call for Ideas, we are soliciting proposals related to The Future of Being Human, exploring in the long term the intersection of humans, science and technology, social and cultural systems, and our environment. Our understanding of the natural world around us, and new insights into individual and societal behaviour, have the potential to provide enormous benefits to humanity and the planet. We invite bold proposals that ask new questions about our complex emerging world, where the issues under study are entangled and dynamic. We are confronting challenging problems that necessitate a diverse team incorporating multiple disciplines (potentially spanning the humanities, social sciences, arts, physical sciences, and life sciences) to engage in a sustained dialogue to develop new insights, and change the conversation on important questions facing science and humanity. [p. 2 print; p. 4 PDF]

There is an upcoming information webinar (from the CIFAR Global Call for Ideas: The Future of Being Human webpage),

Monday, June 28, 2021 – 1:00pm – 1:45pm EDT

Webinar Sign-Up

Also from the CIFAR Global Call for Ideas: The Future of Being Human webpage, here are the various deadlines and additional sources of information,

August 17, 2021

Registration deadline

January 26, 2022

LOI [Letter of Intent] deadline

Spring 2022

LOIs invited to Full Proposal

Fall 2022

Full proposals due

March 2023

New program announcement and celebration

Resources

Program Guide [PDF]

Frequently Asked Questions

Good luck!

Multi-level thinking in science—the art of seeing systems

I’ve quickly read Michael Edgeworth McIntyre’s paper on multi-level thinking and find it provides fascinating insight and some good writing style (I’ve provided a few excerpts from the paper further down in the posting).

Here’s more about the paper from an Aug. 17, 2017 Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences press release on EurekAlert,

An unusual paper “On multi-level thinking and scientific understanding” appears in the October issue of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. The author is Professor Michael Edgeworth McIntyre from University of Cambridge, whose work in atmospheric dynamics is well known. He has also had longstanding interests in astrophysics, music, perception psychology, and biological evolution.

The paper touches on a range of deep questions within and outside the atmospheric sciences. They include insights into the nature of science itself, and of scientific understanding — what it means to understand a scientific problem in depth — and into the communication skills necessary to convey that understanding and to mediate collaboration across specialist disciplines.

The paper appears in a Special Issue arising from last year’s Symposium held in Nanjing to commemorate the life of Professor Duzheng YE, who was well known as a national and international scientific leader and for his own wide range of interests, within and outside the atmospheric sciences. The symposium was organized by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, where Prof. YE had worked nearly 70 years before he passed away. Upon the invitation of Prof. Jiang ZHU, the Director General of IAP, also the Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (AAS), Prof. McIntyre agreed to contribute a review paper to an AAS special issue commemorating the centenary of Duzheng YE’s birth. Prof. YE was also the founding Editor-in-Chief of this journal.

One of Professor McIntyre’s themes is that we all have unconscious mathematics, including Euclidean geometry and the calculus of variations. This is easy to demonstrate and is key to understanding not only how science works but also, for instance, how music works. Indeed, it reveals some of the deepest connections between music and mathematics, going beyond the usual remarks about number-patterns. All this revolves around the biological significance of what Professor McIntyre calls the “organic-change principle”.

Further themes include the scientific value of looking at a problem from more than one viewpoint, and the need to use more than one level of description. Many scientific and philosophical controversies stem from confusing one level of description with another, for instance applying arguments to one level that belong on another. This confusion can be especially troublesome when it comes to questions about human biology and human nature, and about what Professor YE called multi-level “orderly human activities”.

Related to all these points are the contrasting modes of perception and understanding offered by the brain’s left and right hemispheres. Our knowledge of their functioning has progressed far beyond the narrow clichés of popular culture, thanks to recent work in the neurosciences. The two hemispheres automatically give us different levels of description, and complementary views of a problem. Good science takes advantage of this. When the two hemispheres cooperate, with each playing to its own strengths, our problem-solving is at its most powerful.

The paper ends with three examples of unconscious assumptions that have impeded scientific progress in the past. Two of them are taken from Professor McIntyre’s main areas of research. A third is from biology.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

On multi-level thinking and scientific understanding by Michael Edgeworth McIntyre. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences October 2017, Volume 34, Issue 10, pp 1150–1158 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-017-6283-3

This paper is open access.

To give you a sense of his writing and imagination, I’ve excerpted a few paragraphs from p. 1153 but first you need to see this .gif (he provides a number of ways to watch the .gif in his text but I think it’s easier to watch the copy of the one he has on his website),

Now for the excerpt,

Here is an example to show what I mean. It is a classic in experimental psychology, from the work of Professor Gunnar JOHANSSON in the 1970s. …

As soon as the twelve dots start moving, everyone with normal vision sees a person walking. This immediately illustrates several things. First, it illustrates that we all make unconscious assumptions. Here, we unconsciously assume a particular kind of three-dimensional motion. In this case the unconscious assumption is completely involuntary. We cannot help seeing a person walking, despite knowing that it is only twelve moving dots.

The animation also shows that we have unconscious mathematics, Euclidean geometry in this case. In order to generate the percept of a person walking, your brain has to fit a mathematical model to the incoming visual data, in this case a mathematical model based on Euclidean geometry. (And the model-fitting process is an active, and highly complex, predictive process most of which is inaccessible to conscious introspection.)

This brings me to the most central point in our discussion. Science does essentially the same thing. It fits models to data. So science is, in the most fundamental possible sense, an extension of ordinary perception. That is a simple way of saying what was said many decades ago by great thinkers such as Professor Sir Karl POPPER….

I love that phase “unconscious mathematics” for the way it includes even those of us who would never dream of thinking we had any kind of mathematics. I encourage you to read his paper in its entirety, which does include a little technical language in a few spots but the overall thesis is clear and easily understood.

Is the medium the message? Virtual museums and the the user’s experience technology experience

A Sept. 21, 2015 Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) news release by Matt Swayne (also on EurekAlert) puts a different spin on art/science (Note: Links have been removed),

Museum curators planning to develop virtual exhibits online should choose communication and navigation technologies that match the experience they want to offer their visitors, according to a team of researchers.

“When curators think about creating a real-world exhibit, they are thinking about what the theme is and what they want their visitors to get out of the exhibit,” said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory. “What this study suggests is that, just like curators need to be coherent in the content of the exhibit, they need to be conscious of the tools that they employ in their virtual museums.” [emphasis mine]

For some reason that phrase “need to be conscious of the tools that they employ” reminds of Marshall McLuhan and his dictum “the medium is the message.” Here’s more about study from the news release,

Many museum curators hope to create an authentic experience in their online museums by using technology to mimic aspects of the social, personal and physical aspects of a real-world museum experience. However, a more-is-better approach to technology may actually hinder that authentic experience, the researchers suggest.

In a study, visitors to an online virtual art museum found that technology tools used to communicate about and navigate through the exhibits were considered helpful when they were available separately, but less so when they were offered together. The researchers tested customization tools that helped the participants create their own art gallery, live-chat technology to facilitate communication with other visitors and 3-D tool navigation tools that some participants used to explore the museum.

The participants’ experiences often depended on what tools and what combinations of tools they used, according to the researchers, who released their findings in a recent issue of the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction.

The news release goes on to provide some examples of when technologies do not mesh together for a good experience,

“When live chat and customization are offered together, for example, the combination of tools may be perceived to have increased usability, but it turns out using either customization or live chat separately was greater than either both functions together, or neither of the functions,” said Sundar. “We saw similar results not just with perceived usability, but also with sense of control and agency.”

The live chatting tool gave participants a feeling of social presence in the museum, but when live chatting was used in conjunction with the 3D navigation tool, the visitor had less of a sense of control, said Sundar, who worked with Eun Go, assistant professor of broadcasting and journalism, Western Illinois University; Hyang-Sook Kim, assistant professor of mass communication and media communication studies, Towson University and Bo Zhang, doctoral candidate in mass communications, Penn State.

Similarly, participants indicated the live chatting function lessened the realistic experience of the 3D tool, according to the researchers, who suggested that chatting may increase the user’s cognitive burden as they try to navigate through the site.

Each of these tools carries unique meaning for users, Sundar said. While customization provides an individualized experience, live-chatting signals a social experience of the site.

“Our data also suggest that expert users prefer tools that offer more agency or control to users whereas novices appreciate a variety of tools on the interface,” he added.

Users may react to these tools on other online platforms, not just during visits to online museums, Sundar said.

“We might be able to apply this research on tools you might add to news sites, for example, or it could be used to improve educational sites and long-distance learning,” he added. “You just have to be careful about how you deploy the tools because more is not always better.”

The researchers recruited 126 participants for the study. The subjects were assigned one of eight different website variations that tested their reactions to customization, live chat, 3D navigation and combinations of those tools during their visit to a virtual version of the Museum of Modern Art. The museum’s artworks were made available through the Google Art Project.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Communicating Art, Virtually! Psychological Effects of Technological Affordances in a Virtual Museum by S. Shyam Sundar, Eun Goc, Hyang-Sook Kim, & Bo Zhang. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction
Volume 31, Issue 6, 2015 pages 385-401 DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2015.1033912 Accepted author version posted online: 15 Apr 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.

Cool science; where are the women?; biology discovers graphical notations

Popular Science’s Future of .., a programme [developed in response to a question “What’s missing from science programming?” posed by Debbie Myers, {US} Science Channel general manager] , was launched last night (Aug. 11, 2009). From the Fast Company posting by Lynne D. Johnston,

The overall response from the 50-plus room full of mostly New York digerati, was resoundingly, “a show that was both entertaining and smart–not dumbed down.”

Their host, Baratunde Thurston, offers an interesting combination of skills as he is a comedian, political pundit, and author. If you go to the posting, you can find the trailer. (It’s gorgeous and, I suspect, quite expensive due to the effects, and as you’d expect from a teaser, it’s short on science content.)

It does seem as if there’s some sort of campaign to make science ‘cool’ in the US. I say campaign because there was also, a few months ago, the World Science Festival in New York (mentioned in my June 12, 2009 posting). Thanks to Darren Barefoot’s blog I see they have posted some highlights and videos from the festival. Barefoot features one of musician Bobby McFerrin’s presentations here.

Barefoot comments on the oddity of having a musician presenting at a science event. The clip doesn’t clarify why McFerrin would be on the panel but neuroscientists have been expressing a lot of interest in musician’s brains and I noticed that there was at least one neuroscientist on the panel. Still, it would have been nice to have understood the thinking behind the panel composition. If you’re interested in more clips and information about the World Science Festival, go here.

Back to my thoughts on the ‘cool’ science campaign, there have been other initiatives including the ‘Dancing with scientists’ video contest put on by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the nanotechnology video contests put on by the American Chemical Society. All of these initiatives have taken place this year. By contrast, nothing of a similar nature appears to be taking place in Canada. (If you know of a ‘cool science’ project in Canada, please do contact me as I’d be happy to feature it here.)

On the subject of putting together panels, there’s an interesting blog posting by Allyson Kapin (Fast Company) on the dearth of women on technology and/or social media panels. She points out that the problem has many aspects and requires more than one tactic for viable solutions.

She starts by talking about the lack of diversity and she very quickly shifts her primary focus to women. (I’ve seen this before in other writing and I think it happens because the diversity topic is huge so writers want to acknowledge the breadth but have time and expertise to discuss only a small piece of it.) On another tack altogether, I’ve been in the position of assembling a panel and trying to get a diverse group of people can be incredibly difficult. That said, I think more work needs to be done to make sure that panels are as diverse as possible.

Following on my interest in multimodal discourse and new ways of communicating science, a new set of standards for graphically representing biology has been announced. From Physorg.com,

Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and their colleagues in 30 labs worldwide have released a new set of standards for graphically representing biological information – the biology equivalent of the circuit diagram in electronics. This visual language should make it easier to exchange complex information, so that models are accurate, efficient and readily understandable. The new standard, called the Systems Biology Graphical Notation (SBGN), is published today (August 11, 2009) in Nature Biotechnology.

There’s more here and the article in Nature Biotechnology is here (keep scrolling).

Reimagining prosthetic arms; touchable holograms and brief thoughts on multimodal science communication; and nanoscience conference in Seattle

Reimagining the prosthetic arm, an article by Cliff Kuang in Fast Company (here) highlights a student design project at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Students were asked to improve prosthetic arms and were given four categories: decorative, playful, utilitarian, and awareness. This one by Tonya Douraghey and Carli Pierce caught my fancy, after all, who hasn’t thought of growing wings? (Rrom the Fast Company website),

Feathered cuff and wing arm

Feathered cuff and wing arm

I suggest reading Kuang’s article before heading off to the project website to see more student projects.

At the end of yesterday’s posting about MICA and multidimensional data visualization in spaces with up to 12 dimensions (here)  in virtual worlds such as Second Life, I made a comment about multimodal discourse which is something I think will become increasingly important. I’m not sure I can imagine 12 dimensions but I don’t expect that our usual means of visualizing or understanding data are going to be sufficient for the task. Consequently, I’ve been noticing more projects which engage some of our other senses, notably touch. For example, the SIGGRAPH 2009 conference in New Orleans featured a hologram that you can touch. This is another article by Cliff Kuang in Fast Company, Holograms that you can touch and feel. For anyone unfamiliar with SIGGRAPH, the show has introduced a number of important innovations, notably, clickable icons. It’s hard to believe but there was a time when everything was done by keyboard.

My August newsletter from NISE Net (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) brings news of a conference in Seattle, WA at the Pacific Science Centre, Sept. 8 – 11, 2009. It will feature (from the NISE Net blog),

Members of the NISE Net Program group and faculty and students at the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University are teaming up to demonstrate and discuss potential collaborations between the social science community and the informal science education community at a conference of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies in Seattle in early September.

There’s more at the NISE Net blog here including a link to the conference site. (I gather the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Nanotechnologies is in its very early stages of organizing so this is a fairly informal call for registrants.)

The NISE Net nano haiku this month is,

Nanoparticles

Surface plasmon resonance
Silver looks yellow

by Dr. Katie D. Cadwell of the University of Wisconsin-Madison MRSEC.

Have a nice weekend!

Teaching nano the haptic way; Brownian motion ain’t what we thought; EPA issues final new rules for carbon nanotubes

In keeping with my interest in the multimodal communication of science, I have found a slide show about teaching nanotechnology using haptics here. The technique is intended for the visually impaired but as the authors point out visual contact at the nano scale is impossible. So, everyone, visually impaired or not, makes haptic contact with material at the nano scale with the consequence that the teaching technique is suitable for everybody.

As suggested in my July 27, 2009 blog posting (part 4 of the robots and human enhancement series), developments such as these suggest that the notion of physical impairment may change significantly or disappear.

In a media release, on the Azonano site, detailing new revelations about Brownian motion,  Steve Granick, Founder Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois, describes how many of us are taught about Brownian motion,

“In high school science classes, students are often assigned the task of using a microscope to watch a particle of dust sitting in a drop of water,” Granick said. “The dust particle seems alive, moving back and forth, never in the same way. The motion of the dust particle is caused by the random ‘kicks’ of surrounding water molecules.”

Granick goes on to describe what he and his researchers have observed,

“Like Einstein, we used to think we could describe Brownian motion with a standard bell-shaped curve,” Granick said. “But now, with the ability to measure very small distances much more precisely than was possible 100 years ago, we have found that we can have extremes much farther than previously imagined.”

Please do take a look at the story on the Azonano site for more about the significance of this discovery.

Nanowerk News has posted a media release from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about new rules which allow for commercialization of carbon nanotubes under limited conditions.  The EPA document is here and pages 9 (multi-walled carbon nanotubes) and 10 (single-walled nanotubes) are the relevant pages.