Tag Archives: Iceland

The sounds of recent (December 2023) seismic activity in Iceland

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On the heels of yesterday’s When the rocks sing “I got rhythm” (my December 18, 2023 posting), I received (via email) a media notice/reminder/update about a Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois, US) app that allows you to listen,

From the original November 16, 2023 Northwestern University news release by Amanda Morris (also published as a November 16, 2023 news item on phys.org),

As seismic activity intensifies ahead of an impending eruption of a fissure near Iceland’s Fagradalsfjall volcano, the island’s Reykjanes Peninsula is experiencing hundreds of earthquakes per day.

Now, listeners can follow along through Northwestern University’s Earthtunes app. Developed in 2019, the app transforms seismic frequencies into audible pitches. Whereas a classic seismometer records motions in the Earth’s surface as squiggly lines scratched across a page, Earthtunes enables users to hear, rather than see, activity.

So far, Iceland’s recent, ongoing seismic activity sounds like a jarring symphony of doors slamming, hail pelting against a tin roof or window and people cracking trays of ice cubes.

By listening to activities recorded by the Global Seismographic Network station (named BORG), located to the north-northeast of Reykjavik, people can hear how the seismic activity has changed around the Fagradalsfjall area.

In this audio clip, listeners can hear 24 hours of activity recorded from Friday, Nov. 10, into Saturday, Nov. 11. Peppered with a cacophony of sharp knocking noises, it sounds like someone is insistently banging on a door.

“The activity is formidable, exciting and scary,” said Northwestern seismologist Suzan van der Lee, who co-developed Earthtunes. “Iceland did the right thing by evacuating residents in nearby Grindavik and the nearby Svartsengi geothermal power plant, one of the world’s oldest geothermal power plants, which was the first to combine electricity generation with hot water for heating in the region.”

Van der Lee is the Sarah Rebecca Roland Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. In her research, she applies data science to millions of records of seismic waves in order to decode seismic signals, which harbor valuable information about the Earth’s interior dynamics.

As hundreds of earthquakes shake the ground, Van der Lee says the impending eruption is reminiscent of the 1973 eruption of Heimaey on Iceland’s Vestmannaeyjar archipelago.

“This level of danger is unprecedented for this area of Iceland, but not for Iceland as a whole,” said van der Lee, who hiked Fagradalsfjall in June. “While most Icelandic volcanoes erupt away from towns and other infrastructure, Icelanders share the terrible memory of an eruption 50 years ago on the island Vestmannaeyjar, during which lava covered part of that island’s town, Heimaey. The residents felt very vulnerable, as the evacuated people of Grindavik feel now. In a few days or weeks, they might no longer have their jobs, homes and most possessions, while still having to feed their families and pay their mortgages. However, partially resulting from that eruption on Vestmannaeyjar, Icelanders are well prepared for the current situation in the Fagradallsfjall-Svartsengi-Grindavik area.” 

Accelerated audio

This audio clip presents the same data, with the pitch increased by 10 octaves. Listeners will hear a long, low rumbling sound, punctuated by an occasional slamming door.

“What you’re hearing is 24 hours of seismic data — filled with earthquake signals,” van der Lee said. “The vast majority of these quakes are associated with the magma intrusion into the crust of the Fagradallsfjall-Svartsengi-Grindavik area of the Reykjanes Peninsula. Seismic data are not audible; their frequencies are too low. So, the 24 hours of data are compressed into approximately 1.5 minutes of audio data. You can hear an unprecedented intensity of earthquakes during the night from last Friday into Saturday and related to a new magma intrusion into the crust area.”

In a third audio clip, the same data is less compressed, with the pitch increased by just seven octaves

“One can hear frequent earthquakes happening at this point,” van der Lee said. “Icelandic seismologists have been monitoring these quakes and their increasing vigor and changing patterns. They recognized similar patterns to earthquake swarms that preceded the 2021-2023 eruptions of the adjacent Fagradallsfjall volcano.”

Earthtunes is supported by the American Geophysical Union and Northwestern’s department of Earth and planetary sciences. Seismic data is obtained from the Earthscope Consortium. The app was designed and developed by van der Lee, Helio Tejedor, Melanie Marzen, Igor Eufrasio, Josephine Anderson, Liam Toney, Cooper Barth, Michael Ji and Leonicio Cabrera.

Jennifer Ouellette’s November 16, 2023 article for Ars Tecnica draws heavily from the news release while delving into the topic of data sonification (making sounds from data), Note: Links have been removed,

….

Sonification of scientific data is an area of growing interest in many different fields. For instance, several years ago, a project called LHCSound built a library of the “sounds” of a top quark jet and the Higgs boson, among others. The project hoped to develop sonification as a technique for analyzing the data from particle collisions so that physicists could “detect” subatomic particles by ear. Other scientists have mapped the molecular structure of proteins in spider silk threads onto musical theory to produce the “sound” of silk in hopes of establishing a radical new way to create designer proteins. And there’s a free app for Android called the Amino Acid Synthesizer that enables users to create their own protein “compositions” from the sounds of amino acids.

…

The December 19, 2023 Northwestern University media update points to the latest audio file of the eruption of the svartsengi-grindavik fissure in Iceland: 24 hours as of Monday, December 18, 2023 14:00:00 UTC.

Enjoy!

One last thing, there are a number of postings about data sonification here; many but not all scientists and/or communication practitioners think to include audio files.

PoetryFilm Paradox + Disinformation Listening Party in Iceland on March 10, 2016

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Should you be so lucky as to be in Reykjavik, Iceland on March 10, 2016, there’s an opportunity to attend a special poetry event at Mengi. Here’s more from a Feb. 25, 2016 announcement (received via email),

Kvikmyndaljóð Þverstæða + Upplýsingafölsun Hlustunarpartý
[PoetryFilm Paradox + Disinformation Listening Party] [emphasis mine]

Mengi, Reykjavik, 10 March 2016
2,000 ISK, 9pm sharp
Mengi, Óðinsgata 2
Reykjavik 101
Iceland

The Disinformation Listening Party features an extremely rare presentation of electromagnetic sound works by the pioneering sonic arts project Disinformation. Disinformation was founded in London, England, in 1995, and produced a series of highly-influential LPs and CDs, before crossing-over into the fields of sound installation, kinetic and video art, and pure research (early Disinformation works were published by the record company Ash International, aka Touch Records, later works were published by Iris Light and Adaadat Records). Disinformation installations have been described as “actively thrilling” by The Financial Times, The Sound Projector (music magazine) spoke of Disinformation producing “potent drug-like trances of utter black mysteriousness”, The Metro newspaper described Disinformation as “the black-ops unit of the avant-garde”, and The Guardian stated that “Disinformation combine scientific nous with poetic lyricism to create some of the most beautiful installations around”.

The Disinformation Listening Party focusses on shortwave radio recordings of so-called “Type II” (slow-drift) noise storms produced by coronal mass ejections on the surface of the sun.

Disinformation producer Joe Banks is a former UK government funded Research Fellow at City University (London), at Goldsmiths College and The University of Westminster, and is the author of a monograph on psychoacoustics published as “Rorschach Audio – Art & Illusion for Sound”.

PoetryFilm is an iconic and highly influential research art project and screening series, founded by curator and artist Zata Banks [now Zitowski] in 2002. PoetryFilm Paradox is an hour-long presentation, featuring 13 short film artworks exploring the complexities of erotic, romantic and familial love, including animator Kate Jessop’s moving screen adaptation of a letter from Dolce & Gabbana designer Stefano Gabbana to his partner Domenico Dolce; Bruno Teixidor’s powerful film fantasia based on a poem by the Mexican author and translator Tomas Segovia; Brooke Griffin’s sign language film, based on poetry by Raymond Luczak; Stuart Pound’s hypnotic computer visualisation of “Die Nebensonnen” by Franz Schubert; Martin Pickles and Mikey Georgeson’s contemporary rendition of the classic “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot; “Fucking Him” by artists C.O. Moed & Adrian Garcia Gomez; and “447: Intellect – N” – an extraordinary montage of Scrabble letters and electronic noise, by artist Jane Glennie. PoetryFilm Paradox was part of the British Film Institute’s 2015 “LOVE” season (supported by Film Hub London, and managed by Film London, in partnership with the BFI Audience Network), and all 3 London screenings sold out.

…

There is a Facebook posting for this event which also features other events at Mengi.

You can find more about Disinformation at rorschachaudio.com and about PoetryFilm at poetryfilm.org.

PoetryFilm news: January 2016 issue (around the world)

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On Jan. 9, 2016 the latest issue (January 2016) of PoetryFilm News landed in my email box (*Note: There’s a long blank space between the last excerpt and my last comments. I’m sorry but I can’t figure what’s causing it. sigh*),

Forthcoming in 2016
  • I [Zata Banks] have been awarded a 3-month Artist-Researcher residency at the Skagastrond Research Library in Iceland in association with The University of Iceland. … (January – April 2016)
  • Collaboration with The University of Lincoln [UK] on a Poetry + Film creative module for the BA Graphic Design course, including a lecture, and evaluating the final student work (January – March 2016)
  • Screening of a selection of psychoanalysis-informed poetry film artworks taken from The PoetryFilm Archive + psychoanalytic discussion at The Freud Museum, London [UK] (March 2016, exact date TBC)
  • Lecture at Millfield School [UK] about the poetry film artform to inspire sixth form students to make their own poetry film artworks (April 2016)
  • I [Zata Banks] have been invited to judge the USA-based Carbon Culture Review poetry film competition (closing date April 2016).

The Carbon Culture Review (CCR; its focus is on new literature, art, technology, and contemporary culture) poetry film competition was last mentioned here in an Oct. 30, 2015 posting. Since then more information (deadline extension and a broader scope for entries) about the competition has been made available. From the CCR Poetry Film webpage,

Poetry Film Prize

We want to integrate film and literary culture. Carbon Culture will award a $1,000.00 prize for the best poetry film. Zata Kitowski [now Banks], director of PoetryFilm, will pick the grand prize winner and finalists. The winning entry will receive $1,000.00. The top five entries will receive high-profile placements across our social media networks, a one page note alongside honorable mentions in our newsstand print and device editions. Deadline for submissions is April 1, 2016.

By submitting, you grant CCR the right to publish selected poetry films in our online issue as well as recognition in our print issue. All rights revert to the film creator(s) and/or submitter.

Rules for Submission

  1. Create a video adaptation of your original, unpublished poem.
  2. Post the video to a Youtube or Vimeo account and make it live.
  3. Submit the piece as an .Mp4 alongside your bio or team member’s bios to us.
  4. One submission per poet, please. If you previously created a poetry film for our initial guidelines listed in early 2015 for John Gosslee’s poem before we opened the contest to any original poem, you may submit this and one other poetry film for consideration.

Prize Announcements will be made in July 2016. Payment will be made via Paypal.

Film Types

All visual and textual interpretations of any contemporary poem written by you or someone on your team are welcome. Animation (digital or cartoon,) live action, kinetic poems, stop motion, anything you can imagine. We are looking for literal and non-literal interpretations of the poem. How long should it be? That is up to you. Poetry is meant to be heard and we encourage audio.

Eligibility

The prize is open to poets, students, individuals and teams.

You can go here to submit your piece and if you haven’t already, you will need to create an account.

*’Note’ added Jan. 12, 2016 at 1250 PST.

ScienceNordic opens its doors

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I got an exciting announcement today about a new science portal. From the Nov. 16, 2011 announcement,

ScienceNordic is a news service with science news in English covering the Nordic countries. Two Nordic science media, one Danish and one Norwegian, have joined forces to launch ScienceNordic.
The Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education Tora Aasland, who opened ScienceNordic.com, says she expects the new portal to make Nordic research more visible on the global arena.
The international science press is dominated by news from Anglo-American research institutions and periodicals –because they are published in English. [emphasis mine] But the scientific results created in the Nordic countries are just as strong and newsworthy, and ScienceNordic will report on them.
“This leaves a huge gap in the market for science news from the region, communicated to a broader audience in English. We intend to fill this gap,” says Vibeke Hjortlund, editor-in-chief at Videnskab.dk.
“We will, naturally, focus our efforts on areas where Nordic researchers have their particular strengths. This includes areas such as green technology, climate and the environment, oil and offshore technology, biotechnology, gender equality and the welfare state and its economy, says Nina Kristiansen, editor-in-chief at Forskning.no.
ScienceNordic will target the academic environment, the business community, international organisations and decision-makers with interests in scientific development, science journalists and members of the general public with a strong interest in science.
ScienceNordic will cover Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland – with an eye on Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Åland which are also part of the Nordic region.
Nordforsk, The Ministry of Education and Research in Norway and The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Higher Education in Denmark has provided funds to establish ScienceNordic.

I quite agree about research published in English dominating science discussion. I often long for the ability to read more languages so I can better understand what is happening internationally; this new portal is very welcome news.

Here’s a sampling of what you can hope to find at ScienceNordic,

  • When a glacier calves into the ocean scientists see the same patterns that are found in brain impulses
  • Norwegians are still in a state of shock. How will the terrorist attacks on July 22 change the country?
  • Male circumcision leads to a bad sex life, according to new study.
  • Your smartphone can scan your brain, if you install the new Danish app.
  • How did a French, 13th century gold ring end up in inside a stone wall on a small Norwegian island?

It’s also possible to subscribe to the ScienceNordic newsletter: sciencenordic.com/newsletter.

Are we all going to become Ferengis in digital age of storytelling?

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The Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest such fair, opened Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2011 and continues until Sunday, Oct. 16, 2011. This year’s guest of honor is Iceland and its literature. A major focus of this year’s fair is the buying and selling of rights for literary materials of all kinds. Authors and publishers are being urged to create business plans that incorporate multimedia strategies and filmmakers, computer game writers/publishers, and musicians will be discussing media convergence. Here’s the promotional video for this year’s fair laying out the possibilities in its approximately 1 min. running time,

As for those who may not be familiar with the Ferengi, they were a species of alien life form introduced in the tv programme, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Inveterate capitalists, the Ferengi live by their Rules of Acquisition. There you have my tongue-in-cheek comparison between Ferengi and writers. These days, it’s not enough to write a story. Now you have to figure out how to tell that story in multiple media.

Body parts nano style

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In early July 2011, there were reports of a new kind of transplant involving a body part made of a biocomposite. Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene underwent a trachea transplant that required an artificial windpipe crafted by UK experts then flown to Sweden where Beyene’s stem cells were used to coat the windpipe before being transplanted into his body.

It is an extraordinary story not least because Beyene, a patient in a Swedish hospital planning to return to Eritrea after his PhD studies in Iceland, illustrates the international cooperation that made the transplant possible.

The scaffolding material for the artificial windpipe was developed by Professor Alex Seifalian at the University College London in a landmark piece of nanotechnology-enabled tissue engineering. Tim Harper in his July 25, 2011 posting provides more details about the scaffolding,

A team led by Professor Alexander Seifalian (UCL Division of Surgery & Interventional Science; professor of nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London, UK), whose laboratories are headquartered at the Royal Free Hospital, created a glass mold of the patient’s trachea from X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans of the patient. In CT, digital geometry processing is employed to generate a 3D image of the inside of an object from a large series of 2D X-ray images taken around one single axis of rotation.

Then, they manufactured a full size y-shaped trachea scaffold at Professor Seifalian’s laboratories. The scaffold of the trachea was built using a novel nanocomposite polymer developed and patented by Professor Seifalian. Professor Seifalian worked together with Professor Paolo Macchiarini at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden (who also holds an Honorary appointment at UCL).

Professor Seifalian and his team used a porous novel nanocomposite polymer to build the y-shaped trachea scaffold. The pores were millions of little holes, providing this way a place for the patient’s stem cells to grow roots. The team cut strips of the novel nanocomposite polymer and wrapped them around the glass mold creating this way the cartilage rings that conferred structural strength to the trachea.

After the scaffold construct was finished, it was taken to Karolinska Institutet where the patient’s stem cells were seeded by Professor Macchiarini’s team.

Harper goes on to provide more details and insight into what makes this event such an important one.

Meanwhile, Dexter Johnson’s (Nanoclast blog in the IEEE website) July 21, 2011 posting poses a question,

While the nanocomposite scaffold is a critical element to the artificial organ, perhaps no less important was the bioreactor used to grow the stem cells onto it, which was developed at Harvard Bioscience.

If you needed any evidence of how nanotechnology is not only interdisciplinary, but also international, you could just cite this case: UK-developed nanocomposite for the scaffolding material, US-based bioreactor in which the stem cells were grown onto the scaffolding and a Swedish-based medical institute to perform the transplant.

So I ask, which country or region is going to get rich from the breakthrough?

It’s an interesting question and I don’t think I would have framed it in quite that fashion largely because I don’t tend to think of countries or regions getting wealthy from biomedical products since pharmaceutical companies tend to be internationally based. Is Switzerland richer for Novartis?

I suppose I’m a product of the Canadian landscape from which I spring so I think of trees and mines as making a country or region richer as they are inextricably linked to their environment but pharmaceuticals or biomedical appliances can be manufactured anywhere. Consequently, a synthetic organ could be manufactured anywhere once the technology becomes easily available. Who gets rich from this development? I suspect that will be a person or persons if anyone but, not a region or a country.

Getting back to Beyene, here are more details from the July 7, 2011 BBC News article by Michelle Roberts,

Dr Alex Seifalian and his team used this fragile structure [the scaffold] to create a replacement for the patient, whose own windpipe was ravaged by an inoperable tumour.

Despite aggressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the cancer had grown to the size of a golf ball and was blocking his breathing. Without a transplant he would have died.

During a 12-hour operation Professor Macchiarini removed all of the tumour and the diseased windpipe and replaced it with the tailor-made replica [now covered with tissue grown from the patient’s bone marrow tricked into growing like cells found in a trachea].

…

And, importantly, Mr Beyene’s body will accept it as its own, meaning he will not need to take the strong anti-rejection drugs that other transplant patients have to.

Professor Macchiarini said this was the real breakthrough.

“Thanks to nanotechnology, this new branch of regenerative medicine, we are now able to produce a custom-made windpipe within two days or one week.

“This is a synthetic windpipe. The beauty of this is you can have it immediately. There is no delay. This technique does not rely on a human donation.”

He said many other organs could be repaired or replaced in the same way.

A month on from his operation, Mr Beyene is still looking weak, but well.

Sitting up in his hospital bed, he said: “I was very scared, very scared about the operation. But it was live or die.”

My best wishes to Beyene and his family who are also pioneers.