Tag Archives: University of Bristol

D-PLACE: an open access database of places, language, culture, and enviroment

In an attempt to be a bit more broad in my interpretation of the ‘society’ part of my commentary I’m including this July 8, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily (Note: A link has been removed),

An international team of researchers has developed a website at d-place.org to help answer long-standing questions about the forces that shaped human cultural diversity.

D-PLACE — the Database of Places, Language, Culture and Environment — is an expandable, open access database that brings together a dispersed body of information on the language, geography, culture and environment of more than 1,400 human societies. It comprises information mainly on pre-industrial societies that were described by ethnographers in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

A July 8, 2016 University of Toronto news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, expands on the theme,

“Human cultural diversity is expressed in numerous ways: from the foods we eat and the houses we build, to our religious practices and political organisation, to who we marry and the types of games we teach our children,” said Kathryn Kirby, a postdoctoral fellow in the Departments of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Geography at the University of Toronto and lead author of the study. “Cultural practices vary across space and time, but the factors and processes that drive cultural change and shape patterns of diversity remain largely unknown.

“D-PLACE will enable a whole new generation of scholars to answer these long-standing questions about the forces that have shaped human cultural diversity.”

Co-author Fiona Jordan, senior lecturer in anthropology at the University of Bristol and one of the project leads said, “Comparative research is critical for understanding the processes behind cultural diversity. Over a century of anthropological research around the globe has given us a rich resource for understanding the diversity of humanity – but bringing different resources and datasets together has been a huge challenge in the past.

“We’ve drawn on the emerging big data sets from ecology, and combined these with cultural and linguistic data so researchers can visualise diversity at a glance, and download data to analyse in their own projects.”

D-PLACE allows users to search by cultural practice (e.g., monogamy vs. polygamy), environmental variable (e.g. elevation, mean annual temperature), language family (e.g. Indo-European, Austronesian), or region (e.g. Siberia). The search results can be displayed on a map, a language tree or in a table, and can also be downloaded for further analysis.

It aims to enable researchers to investigate the extent to which patterns in cultural diversity are shaped by different forces, including shared history, demographics, migration/diffusion, cultural innovations, and environmental and ecological conditions.

D-PLACE was developed by an international team of scientists interested in cross-cultural research. It includes researchers from Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human history in Jena Germany, University of Auckland, Colorado State University, University of Toronto, University of Bristol, Yale, Human Relations Area Files, Washington University in Saint Louis, University of Michigan, American Museum of Natural History, and City University of New York.

The diverse team included: linguists; anthropologists; biogeographers; data scientists; ethnobiologists; and evolutionary ecologists, who employ a variety of research methods including field-based primary data collection; compilation of cross-cultural data sources; and analyses of existing cross-cultural datasets.

“The team’s diversity is reflected in D-PLACE, which is designed to appeal to a broad user base,” said Kirby. “Envisioned users range from members of the public world-wide interested in comparing their cultural practices with those of other groups, to cross-cultural researchers interested in pushing the boundaries of existing research into the drivers of cultural change.”

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

D-PLACE: A Global Database of Cultural, Linguistic and Environmental Diversity by Kathryn R. Kirby, Russell D. Gray, Simon J. Greenhill, Fiona M. Jordan, Stephanie Gomes-Ng, Hans-Jörg Bibiko, Damián E. Blasi, Carlos A. Botero, Claire Bowern, Carol R. Ember, Dan Leehr, Bobbi S. Low, Joe McCarter, William Divale, Michael C. Gavin. PLOS ONE, 2016; 11 (7): e0158391 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158391 Published July 8, 2016.

This paper is open access.

You can find D-PLACE here.

While it might not seem like that there would be a close link between anthropology and physics in the 19th and early 20th centuries, that information can be mined for more contemporary applications. For example, someone who wants to make a case for a more diverse scientific community may want to develop a social science approach to the discussion. The situation in my June 16, 2016 post titled: Science literacy, science advice, the US Supreme Court, and Britain’s House of Commons, could be extended into a discussion and educational process using data from D-Place and other sources to make the point,

Science literacy may not be just for the public, it would seem that US Supreme Court judges may not have a basic understanding of how science works. David Bruggeman’s March 24, 2016 posting (on his Pasco Phronesis blog) describes a then current case before the Supreme Court (Justice Antonin Scalia has since died), Note: Links have been removed,

…

It’s a case concerning aspects of the University of Texas admissions process for undergraduates and the case is seen as a possible means of restricting race-based considerations for admission. While I think the arguments in the case will likely revolve around factors far removed from science and or technology, there were comments raised by two Justices that struck a nerve with many scientists and engineers.

Both Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice John Roberts raised questions about the validity of having diversity where science and scientists are concerned [emphasis mine]. Justice Scalia seemed to imply that diversity wasn’t esential for the University of Texas as most African-American scientists didn’t come from schools at the level of the University of Texas (considered the best university in Texas). Chief Justice Roberts was a bit more plain about not understanding the benefits of diversity. He stated, “What unique perspective does a black student bring to a class in physics?”

To that end, Dr. S. James Gates, theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland, and member of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (and commercial actor) has an editorial in the March 25 [2016] issue of Science explaining that the value of having diversity in science does not accrue *just* to those who are underrepresented.

Dr. Gates relates his personal experience as a researcher and teacher of how people’s background inform their practice of science, and that two different people may use the same scientific method, but think about the problem differently.

I’m guessing that both Scalia and Roberts and possibly others believe that science is the discovery and accumulation of facts. In this worldview science facts such as gravity are waiting for discovery and formulation into a ‘law’. They do not recognize that most science is a collection of beliefs and may be influenced by personal beliefs. For example, we believe we’ve proved the existence of the Higgs boson but no one associated with the research has ever stated unequivocally that it exists.

More generally, with D-PLACE and the recently announced Trans-Atlantic Platform (see my July 15, 2016 post about it), it seems Canada’s humanities and social sciences communities are taking strides toward greater international collaboration and a more profound investment in digital scholarship.

Dance you spectroscopy fool! Dance!

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dS (danceroom Spectroscopy) is being billed as a large scale interactive molecular physics experience in a Sept. 8, 2014 news item on Azonano,

Earlier this year, dS headlined at the Barbican, London’s [UK] hot multi-arts and conference venue. Now it’s coming west.

dS, short for danceroom Spectroscopy, is the world’s first large-scale, interactive molecular physics experience, and it was created by scholar, scientist and artist David Glowacki, a Royal Society research fellow at the University of Bristol, presently in residence at Stanford [Stanford University, California, US].

Glowacki is exhibiting an interactive installation based on his dS project at the Stanford Art Gallery this month. He is also collaborating with artist Camille Utterback, an assistant professor of art and art history, and composer and sound engineer Michael St. Clair, a lecturer in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies, to extend the system for a dance production at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco in this month.

A Sept. 5, 2014 Stanford University news release by Robin Wander, which originated the news item, describes the installation at Stanford and an upcoming performance in San Francisco in more detail (Note: Stanford University located in Stanford, CA, is in the northern part of Silicon Valley near Palo Alto and within driving distance of San Francisco),

The dS technology works by using a set of 3-D imaging cameras that communicate with a custom-built high-performance computer to interpret people as energy fields. The computer embeds people’s fields in an atomic physics simulation, with the net result that they can use their fields to steer the simulation. The result is graphics and sound, both of which are generated in real-time response to human movement.

The sonic component of dS is carried out using analysis techniques that are common to the field of molecular spectroscopy. The computer performs real-time analysis of how the simulated atoms vibrate; as participants move, they change the atomic vibrations and generate different sounds. However, for the Cowell production, St. Clair is not generating sound per se; rather, he is using the particle data to remix his musical source material, warping it in pitch, time and tempo.

“Not only is dS built from the same mathematics and algorithms that I use in my chemical physics research, but I developed it in close collaboration with a team of artists,” said Glowacki. “As a consequence, it’s as much a scientific research tool as it is a beautiful interactive artwork. Our human sensory organs cannot see the atomic world; nevertheless, scientific communication relies on how we imagine it to look, and this opens up fascinating aesthetic territory.”

He observes that dance is an art form with a highly developed vocabulary that is suited to discussing and analyzing dynamical systems: “I found that I had more in common with the dancers than I thought because we both have insights into the subtleties of dynamical systems. It’s actually been quite interesting to see how often chemists and biochemists use dance analogies to describe dynamical phenomena in their research.”

The range of purposes employed by Glowacki’s dS technology is particularly exciting to him. In addition to the artistic application, he is using it as a tool to educate K–12 schoolchildren and the general public about nanoscale molecular physics by giving them an interactive glimpse into the dynamics of the otherwise invisible molecular world.

“Having seen the extent to which people engage with dS and how they love playing with it, we’ve started investigating whether it can be developed as a digital platform where ‘citizen scientists’ can actually use it to help us conduct real scientific investigations to learn how biological molecules work,” he said.

…

Utterback had already begun to collaborate with choreographer Mark Foehringer on Dances of the Sacred and Profane when she learned of Glowacki’s work. “My artwork often uses computer vision systems to generate live imagery based on human movement in public places. The collaboration with Mark is the first time I’ll be creating imagery based on choreographed movements of trained dancers, not the movements of the general public.”

She was thrilled to learn of another Stanford colleague working on a high-speed 3-D tracking system suitable for dance. Glowacki generously offered to let her build on the existing dS system for Dances of the Sacred and Profane.

The original aesthetics of dS focused on clearly visualizing the particle behaviors and the people in the system. For Dances of the Sacred and Profane, Utterback worked with dS programmer and artist Phill Tew to extend the visual capabilities of the system to include different textures, different blending modes and the ability to layer video into the system. “The system is still fundamentally a visualization of how particles react to an energy field, but the new capabilities allow me to use it in a much more metaphorical and narrative way that supports the content of the Dances of the Sacred and Profane performance,” she said.

The performance morphs the more straightforward particle visualizations into other types of imagery. For example, in one scene, the particle movement controlled by the dancers feels very liquid and watery. This is used to create a visual reference to the lily ponds in Claude Monet’s paintings of his gardens at Giverny. Utterback said, “We blend a video of clouds under the particle simulation to increase the feeling of reflection. The particles become ripples on the water, which disrupt the reflections.

“In other words, we are building a whole visual world around the particle movement. What I love, though, is that while we are doing this visually for the performance, in reality our physical world is built around these particle dynamics. So my work continues to extend David’s goals for building the system in the first place – which is helping people appreciate the incredible dynamics that are present in the world all around us.”

See, hear and feel

St. Clair heard about dS long before meeting Glowacki on campus. “I loved his enthusiasm for blending the ways that performance and science think – and, even more so, the ways that performance and science see, hear and feel,” he said. “David has this very deep understanding – one that most physicists share, but many resist – that our choices about how to represent physical phenomena outside of the range of human perception are basically aesthetic rather than scientific. Being able to freely play with encompassing, aural representations of ambiguously space- and time-like phenomena was immensely appealing to me.

“Also, to be blunt: The technology is really cool. I love working with Camille, who has a brilliant visual sense and a kind of technical-intuitive aesthetic approach that I value a lot; and Mark’s precise and skillful formal modern dance vocabulary is a very familiar and comfortable basis for me to do compositional work from.”

The dS projects are closely related to St. Clair’s academic work in digital performance, design studies and pedagogy, and the technological and cultural relationships between broad genres of performance. In particular, he said, “It closely touches on my work with play and games – much of the sound design I’m doing here is more like game design than it’s like traditional musical composition, in that I’m building a physical environment with particular rules and affordances that produces output based on someone else’s play, in this case, dance, in the environment.”

Here are some specifics about the installation, an artists’ talk, and the performances (Note: Links have been removed),

The interactive danceroom Spectroscopy installation at the Stanford Art Gallery runs through Sept. 20. Visitors interacting with the dS setup will see real-time projections thrown up on the surrounding walls of their “energy avatars” and will be able to use them to manipulate a real-time atomic physics simulation, generating both graphics and sound.

On Sept. 11 at noon, Glowacki and Utterback will give a free talk in which Glowacki explains the scientific origins of dS and Utterback talks about her experience using it to develop live interactive graphics for the Cowell Theater production Dances of the Sacred and Profane.

The Cowell production, a world premiere, is a collaboration between Glowacki, Utterback, St. Clair, choreographer Mark Foehringer and a host of Bay Area artists, computer scientists and dancers. The production was developed around a selection of musical pieces, including works by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, and uses the live video-tracking abilities of the dS system to reimagine the Impressionist exploration of passing time. The Cowell show runs Sept. 13–14 and 18–21 [2014].

You can find more information on the Stanford Art Gallery dance Spectroscopy webpage, the danceroom Spectroscopy website, and the Fort Mason Center Cowell Theater: Dances for the Sacred & Profane webpage.

danceroom Spectroscopy was last featured here in an Oct. 25, 2013 posting.

Cardiac pacemakers: Korea’s in vivo demonstration of a self-powered one* and UK’s breath-based approach

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As i best I can determine ,the last mention of a self-powered pacemaker and the like on this blog was in a Nov. 5, 2012 posting (Developing self-powered batteries for pacemakers). This latest news from The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is, I believe, the first time that such a device has been successfully tested in vivo. From a June 23, 2014 news item on ScienceDaily,

As the number of pacemakers implanted each year reaches into the millions worldwide, improving the lifespan of pacemaker batteries has been of great concern for developers and manufacturers. Currently, pacemaker batteries last seven years on average, requiring frequent replacements, which may pose patients to a potential risk involved in medical procedures.

A research team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), headed by Professor Keon Jae Lee of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST and Professor Boyoung Joung, M.D. of the Division of Cardiology at Severance Hospital of Yonsei University, has developed a self-powered artificial cardiac pacemaker that is operated semi-permanently by a flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator.

A June 23, 2014 KAIST news release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, provides more details,

The artificial cardiac pacemaker is widely acknowledged as medical equipment that is integrated into the human body to regulate the heartbeats through electrical stimulation to contract the cardiac muscles of people who suffer from arrhythmia. However, repeated surgeries to replace pacemaker batteries have exposed elderly patients to health risks such as infections or severe bleeding during operations.

The team’s newly designed flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator directly stimulated a living rat’s heart using electrical energy converted from the small body movements of the rat. This technology could facilitate the use of self-powered flexible energy harvesters, not only prolonging the lifetime of cardiac pacemakers but also realizing real-time heart monitoring.

The research team fabricated high-performance flexible nanogenerators utilizing a bulk single-crystal PMN-PT thin film (iBULe Photonics). The harvested energy reached up to 8.2 V and 0.22 mA by bending and pushing motions, which were high enough values to directly stimulate the rat’s heart.

Professor Keon Jae Lee said:

“For clinical purposes, the current achievement will benefit the development of self-powered cardiac pacemakers as well as prevent heart attacks via the real-time diagnosis of heart arrhythmia. In addition, the flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator could also be utilized as an electrical source for various implantable medical devices.”

This image illustrating a self-powered nanogenerator for a cardiac pacemaker has been provided by KAIST,

This picture shows that a self-powered cardiac pacemaker is enabled by a flexible piezoelectric energy harvester.
Credit: KAIST

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

Self-Powered Cardiac Pacemaker Enabled by Flexible Single Crystalline PMN-PT Piezoelectric Energy Harvester by Geon-Tae Hwang, Hyewon Park, Jeong-Ho Lee, SeKwon Oh, Kwi-Il Park, Myunghwan Byun, Hyelim Park, Gun Ahn, Chang Kyu Jeong, Kwangsoo No, HyukSang Kwon, Sang-Goo Lee, Boyoung Joung, and Keon Jae Lee. Advanced Materials DOI: 10.1002/adma.201400562
Article first published online: 17 APR 2014

© 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

There was a May 15, 2014 KAIST news release on EurekAlert announcing this same piece of research but from a technical perspective,

The energy efficiency of KAIST’s piezoelectric nanogenerator has increased by almost 40 times, one step closer toward the commercialization of flexible energy harvesters that can supply power infinitely to wearable, implantable electronic devices

NANOGENERATORS are innovative self-powered energy harvesters that convert kinetic energy created from vibrational and mechanical sources into electrical power, removing the need of external circuits or batteries for electronic devices. This innovation is vital in realizing sustainable energy generation in isolated, inaccessible, or indoor environments and even in the human body.

Nanogenerators, a flexible and lightweight energy harvester on a plastic substrate, can scavenge energy from the extremely tiny movements of natural resources and human body such as wind, water flow, heartbeats, and diaphragm and respiration activities to generate electrical signals. The generators are not only self-powered, flexible devices but also can provide permanent power sources to implantable biomedical devices, including cardiac pacemakers and deep brain stimulators.

However, poor energy efficiency and a complex fabrication process have posed challenges to the commercialization of nanogenerators. Keon Jae Lee, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST, and his colleagues have recently proposed a solution by developing a robust technique to transfer a high-quality piezoelectric thin film from bulk sapphire substrates to plastic substrates using laser lift-off (LLO).

Applying the inorganic-based laser lift-off (LLO) process, the research team produced a large-area PZT thin film nanogenerators on flexible substrates (2 cm x 2 cm).

“We were able to convert a high-output performance of ~250 V from the slight mechanical deformation of a single thin plastic substrate. Such output power is just enough to turn on 100 LED lights,” Keon Jae Lee explained.

The self-powered nanogenerators can also work with finger and foot motions. For example, under the irregular and slight bending motions of a human finger, the measured current signals had a high electric power of ~8.7 μA. In addition, the piezoelectric nanogenerator has world-record power conversion efficiency, almost 40 times higher than previously reported similar research results, solving the drawbacks related to the fabrication complexity and low energy efficiency.

Lee further commented,

“Building on this concept, it is highly expected that tiny mechanical motions, including human body movements of muscle contraction and relaxation, can be readily converted into electrical energy and, furthermore, acted as eternal power sources.”

The research team is currently studying a method to build three-dimensional stacking of flexible piezoelectric thin films to enhance output power, as well as conducting a clinical experiment with a flexible nanogenerator.

In addition to the 2012 posting I mentioned earlier, there was also this July 12, 2010 posting which described research on harvesting biomechanical movement ( heart beat, blood flow, muscle stretching, or even irregular vibration) at the Georgia (US) Institute of Technology where the lead researcher observed,

… Wang [Professor Zhong Lin Wang at Georgia Tech] tells Nanowerk. “However, the applications of the nanogenerators under in vivo and in vitro environments are distinct. Some crucial problems need to be addressed before using these devices in the human body, such as biocompatibility and toxicity.”

Bravo to the KAIST researchers for getting this research to the in vivo testing stage.

Meanwhile at the University of Bristol and at the University of Bath, researchers have received funding for a new approach to cardiac pacemakers, designed them with the breath in mind. From a June 24, 2014 news item on Azonano,

Pacemaker research from the Universities of Bath and Bristol could revolutionise the lives of over 750,000 people who live with heart failure in the UK.

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is awarding funding to researchers developing a new type of heart pacemaker that modulates its pulses to match breathing rates.

A June 23, 2014 University of Bristol press release, which originated the news item, provides some context,

During 2012-13 in England, more than 40,000 patients had a pacemaker fitted.

Currently, the pulses from pacemakers are set at a constant rate when fitted which doesn’t replicate the natural beating of the human heart.

The normal healthy variation in heart rate during breathing is lost in cardiovascular disease and is an indicator for sleep apnoea, cardiac arrhythmia, hypertension, heart failure and sudden cardiac death.

The device is then briefly described (from the press release),

The novel device being developed by scientists at the Universities of Bath and Bristol uses synthetic neural technology to restore this natural variation of heart rate with lung inflation, and is targeted towards patients with heart failure.

The device works by saving the heart energy, improving its pumping efficiency and enhancing blood flow to the heart muscle itself. Pre-clinical trials suggest the device gives a 25 per cent increase in the pumping ability, which is expected to extend the life of patients with heart failure.

One aim of the project is to miniaturise the pacemaker device to the size of a postage stamp and to develop an implant that could be used in humans within five years.

Dr Alain Nogaret, Senior Lecturer in Physics at the University of Bath, explained: “This is a multidisciplinary project with strong translational value. By combining fundamental science and nanotechnology we will be able to deliver a unique treatment for heart failure which is not currently addressed by mainstream cardiac rhythm management devices.”

The research team has already patented the technology and is working with NHS consultants at the Bristol Heart Institute, the University of California at San Diego and the University of Auckland. [emphasis mine]

Professor Julian Paton, from the University of Bristol, added: “We’ve known for almost 80 years that the heart beat is modulated by breathing but we have never fully understood the benefits this brings. The generous new funding from the BHF will allow us to reinstate this natural occurring synchrony between heart rate and breathing and understand how it brings therapy to hearts that are failing.”

Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the BHF, said: “This study is a novel and exciting first step towards a new generation of smarter pacemakers. More and more people are living with heart failure so our funding in this area is crucial. The work from this innovative research team could have a real impact on heart failure patients’ lives in the future.”

Given some current events (‘Tesla opens up its patents’, Mike Masnick’s June 12, 2014 posting on Techdirt), I wonder what the situation will be vis à vis patents by the time this device gets to market.

* ‘one’ added to title on Aug. 13, 2014.

danceroom Spectroscopy (dS) or dancing the nano in the UK

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Professor David R. Glowacki of the University of Bristol has put together, along with his team, a project that has delight ‘written’ all over it. From the Oct. 23, 2013 University of Bristol press release (Note: Links have been removed),

Developed by Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Bristol and Pervasive Media Studio resident Dr David Glowacki, danceroom Spectroscopy is a remarkable new way to visualise the invisible nanoscale atomic world that makes up everything around us, including our own bodies.

A stunning 21-metre 360° visual projection will be created at Brunel’s Old Station in Bristol that will shift and change as visitors play with their own movements and energy forces.

The show includes an award winning dance performance entitled ‘Hidden Fields’ [Friday 25 and Saturday 26 October] by a group of dancers whose beautifully choreographed movement creates unique interactive visualisations. The daytime programme will feature several talks from Dr Glowacki explaining the meaning and the science behind danceroom Spectroscopy.

Dr Glowacki has been developing a way to visualise and interact with our own energies and molecules since becoming a Pervasive Media Studio resident in 2010. He said: “It’s always been a challenge for scientists to visualise the invisible world of nano-molecules. We’re used to seeing ball and stick representations, but by working with a talented team comprised of musicians, computer scientists, choreographers, dancers and artists, we have been able to do something completely new and different – an interactive and inspiring way to catch a glimpse of the dynamic atomic world in which we’re embedded, and imagine how our own energy fields link to the atomic world that surrounds us all the time, but is too small for our eyes to see. It’s incredible to experience, and will hopefully make us see ourselves in a completely different way.”

An Oct. 25, 2013 posting by Glowacki on the Guardian (Small World Nanotech blog sponsored by NanOpinion) offers more insight into the project (Note: Links have been removed),

Tibetan texts quote the Buddha as having said: “All the many things in the universe are appearances of collections.” These words, spoken nearly 2,500 years ago, resonate with the recent Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry, and physics – which recognise advances in our understanding of how tiny things are composed of even tinier things.

In medicine, the prize was awarded for insights related to the machinery that enables substances to be shuttled in and out of living cells. Cells are collections of molecules, and the chemistry prize recognised the development of detailed computer models explaining how molecules work (nearly 100,000 times smaller than cells). Molecules are collections of atoms, and the physics prize was awarded for the theory that led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, helping us understand the fundamental particles that make up an atom.

These awards highlight two general lessons that modern science teaches us about nature. First, lots of the mechanics that drives nature occurs on a scale that is very small and far beyond human sense perception – it is invisible to our eyes. Second, the invisible world is dynamic. No matter how many textbooks show stationary snapshots of cells, molecules and atoms, they are misleading. Tiny things are actually dynamic and perpetually changing. They are engaged in a delicate dance that depends on how their energy fields interact with their surroundings.

…

We would do well to cultivate an intuition and sensitivity to the invisible, both as individuals and as a culture. It’s fascinating to imagine what might come about through this sort of heightened sensitivity. For example, what if we could see ourselves inhaling the same gas molecules exhaled by others?

Here’s a description of the danceroom Spectroscopy installation taking place from Oct. 24,-26, 2015 in Bristol (from the event page on the watershed.co.uk website; Note: Links have been removed),

Combining physics, high performance computing, music, dance and installation art, award winning danceroom Spectroscopy (dS) is a new interactive visualisation of the nano-world, but with a twist.

Part video game, part art installation, part immersive science visualisation, part social experiment and completely surprising: danceroom Spectroscopy invites Bristol to move, observe, play and dance for a weekend fusion of art and science that makes the invisible visible.

Fusing 3D imagery with real molecular dynamics, dS is a unique project that brings together scientists and artists each motivated by a desire to reveal and interpret our connection to the beautiful and subtle microscopic world. Set inside a 21-metre 360-degree immersive projection dome you will be able to not only see your own energy field, but use it to interact with the otherwise invisible atomic world. dS makes serious science seriously fun.

dS is here in its home town of Bristol, where it all began, for three days in Brunel’s Old Station Passenger Shed by Temple Meads (see a map here) before it goes on an international tour. So come and interact with the subtle beauty of the atomic world by dropping in for the family programme on Sat 26 Oct or by buying a ticket for the unique dance performance Hidden Fields on Fri 25 or Sat 26 Oct. Daytime on Thu 24 and Fri 25 is reserved for schools and university partners.

danceroom Spectroscopy has been developed at the Pervasive Media Studio. Led by Dr. David Glowacki, a Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, it has resulted from the collaborative effort of a a talented multi-disciplinary team, comprising Dr. Thomas Mitchell (University of the West of England), digital artist Phill Tew, Professor Joseph Hyde (Bath Spa University), choreographer Laura Kriefman, and a talented group of contemporary dancers including Lisa May Thomas, Emma Harrie, Tomomi Kosano, and Miyako Asano. http://danceroom-spec.com/people/

For those of us who can’t get to Bristol this weekend, there’s this video of Glowacki describing his project and showing a group of people interacting with a previous installation,

You can find out more on the danceroom Spectroscopy website. The events page lists previous installation sites (Including a June 2013 installation at the World Science Festival in New York City) and upcoming installations, mostly in the UK, but there’s also a January 2014 installation scheduled in Germany..

Structure of color

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AGELESS BRILLIANCE: Although the pigment-derived leaf color of this decades-old specimen of the African perennial Pollia condensata has faded, the fruit still maintains its intense metallic-blue iridescence.COURTESY OF P.J. RUDALL [downloaded from http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34200/title/Color-from-Structure/]

Hard to believe those berries were collected more than four decades ago, according to Cristina Luiggi in her Feb. 1, 2013 article, Color from Structure, for The Scientist magazine. Her focus is on biological nanostructures and it is a fascinating article which I urge you to read in its entirety if you have the time and this kind of thing interests you. As you can see, the pictures are great.

Here are a few excerpts from the piece,

Colors may be evolution’s most beautiful accident. Spontaneous mutations that perturbed the arrangement of structural components, such as cellulose, collagen, chitin, and keratin, inadvertently created nanoscale landscapes that catch light in the most vibrantly diverse ways—producing iridescent greens, fiery reds, brilliant blues, opalescent whites, glossy silvers, and ebony blacks.

Structural colors, in contrast to those produced by pigments or dyes, arise from the physical interaction of light with biological nanostructures. These color-creating structures likely developed as an important phenotype during the Cambrian explosion more than 500 million years ago, when organisms developed the first eyes and the ability to detect light, color, shade, and contrast. “As soon as you had visual predators, there were organisms that were either trying to distract, avoid, or communicate with those predators using structural coloration,” says Yale University evolutionary ornithologist Richard Prum.

Ever since, structural coloration has evolved multiple times across the tree of life, as a wide range of organisms developed ways to fine-tune the geometry of some of the most abundant (and often colorless) biomaterials on Earth, engineering grooves, pockets, and films that scatter light waves and cause them to interfere with each other in ways we humans happen to find aesthetically pleasing.

Here’s why color derived from structure doesn’t fade, from Luiggi’s article,

Pigments and dyes are molecules that produce colors by the selective absorption and reflection of specific wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Structural colors, on the other hand, rely exclusively on the shape of the material and not its chemical properties. While pigments and dyes degrade and their colors fade over time, some types of structural coloration, which rely on the same materials that make up tree bark, insect exoskeletons, and claws or nails, can persist hundreds, thousands, and even millions of years after the death of the organism.

Structural color can be found in a lot of plant life,

Although there are only a handful of known examples of structural colors in fruits, there are plenty to be found in the leaves and petals of plants. Within every family of flowering plants, there is at least one species that displays structural colors.

“The presence of structural colors, especially in flowers, is likely used by pollinators to spot the position of the flower and to recognize it better,” Vignolini [Silvia Vignolini, a physics postdoc at the University of Cambridge] explains. But in some plants, the evolutionary purpose of structural coloration is harder to pin down. The leaves of the low-lying tropical spikemoss Selaginella willdenowii, for example, produce blue-green iridescence when young and growing in the shade, and tend to lose the structural coloration with age and when exposed to high levels of light. The iridescence is achieved by cells in the leaves’ upper epidermis, which contain a few layers of cellulose microfibrils packed with different amounts of water. This ultrastructure is often absent in the leaves of the same species growing in direct sunlight. Researchers hypothesize that the spikemoss turns off its iridescence by changing the water content of the leaves’ cell walls, says Heather Whitney, a research fellow at the University of Bristol who studies iridescence in plants.

This capability is not limited to plants. Insects (jewel beetles and the morpho butterfly are often cited) and fish also have evolved to include structural color as protective or attractive devices, from Luiggi’s article,

The brightest living tissues on the planet are found in fish. Under ideal conditions, for example, the silvery scales of the European sardine and the Atlantic herring can act like near-perfect mirrors—reflecting up to 90 percent of incoming light. It is an irony of nature that these shiniest of structures are not meant to be flaunted, but are intended as camouflage.

“When you’re out in the open water, if you drop down below 10 to 30 meters, in any direction you look, the intensity of light is the same,” explains Nicholas Roberts, a physicist at the University of Bristol who specializes in bio-optics. At that depth, a perfect reflector, or mirror, would seem invisible, because light is equally reflected from all sides and angles.

It will be interesting to see if there’s any future discussion of the giant squid in the context of structural color since, according to very recent research (as per my Feb. 1, 2013 posting), it appears to be covered in gold leaf when observed in its habitat.

Luiggi’s article starts with an ornithologist and circles back in a discussion about the difficulty of creating nanostructures, soft matter condensed physics, and birds,

To create structural colors, organisms must master architecture at the nanoscale—the size of visible-light wavelengths. “But it turns out that biology doesn’t do a good job of creating nanostructures,” Prum says.

Instead, organisms create the initial conditions that allow those nanostructures to grow using self-organizing physical processes. Thus, organisms exploit what’s known as soft condensed matter physics, or “the physics of squishy stuff,” as Prum likes to call it. This relatively new field of physics deals with materials that are right at the boundaries of hard solids, liquids, and gases.

“There’ve been huge advances in this field in the last 30 years which have created rich theories of how structure can arise at the nanoscale,” Prum says. “It has been very applicable to the understanding of how structural colors grow.”

Soft condensed matter physics has been particularly useful in understanding the production of the amorphous nanostructures that imbue the feathers of certain bird species with intensely vibrant hues. The blue color of the male Eastern bluebird (Sialia sialis), for example, is produced by the selective scattering of blue light from a complex nanostructure of b-keratin channels and air pockets in the hairlike branches called feather barbs that give the quill its lift. The size of the air pockets determines the wavelengths that are selectively amplified.

While there’s better understanding of the mechanisms involved in structural color, scientists are a long way from replicating the processes, from the article,

“The three-dimensional nature of the structures themselves is just so complex,” says Vukusic. [physicist Peter Vukusic, a professor of natural photonics at the University of Exeter, UK] “Were it to be a simple periodic system with a regular geometry, you could easily put that into a computer model and run simulations all day. But the problem is that they are never perfectly periodic.”

This article is open access so, as I noted earlier, all you need is the time. As of my Feb. 6, 2013 posting, there was some new research announced about scientists making observations about the structural color in peacock feathers and applying some of those ideas to develop better resolution in e-readers.

Camouflage for everyone

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The Institute of Physics (IOP) journal, Bioinspiration and BIomimetics, has published an open access article on camouflage inspired by zebrafish and squid. From the IOP’s May 2, 2012 news release

Researchers from the University of Bristol have created artificial muscles that can be transformed at the flick of a switch to mimic the remarkable camouflaging abilities of organisms such as squid and zebrafish.

They demonstrate two individual transforming mechanisms that they believe could be used in ‘smart clothing’ to trigger camouflaging tricks similar to those seen in nature.

…

The soft, stretchy, artificial muscles are based on specialist cells called chromatophores that are found in amphibians, fish, reptiles and cephalopods, and contain pigments of colours that are responsible for the animals’ remarkable colour-changing effects.

Here’s the video mentioned in the IOP’s May 2, 2012 news release,

The lead author Jonathan Rossiter provides a description of the work (which may help you better understand what you’re seeing on the video), from the May 2, 2012 news item,

Two types of artificial chromatophores were created in the study: the first based on a mechanism adopted by a squid and the second based on a rather different mechanism adopted by zebrafish.

A typical colour-changing cell in a squid has a central sac containing granules of pigment. The sac is surrounded by a series of muscles and when the cell is ready to change colour, the brain sends a signal to the muscles and they contract. The contracting muscles make the central sacs expand, generating the optical effect which makes the squid look like it is changing colour.

The fast expansion of these muscles was mimicked using dielectric elastomers (DEs) – smart materials, usually made of a polymer, which are connected to an electric circuit and expand when a voltage is applied. They return to their original shape when they are short circuited.

In contrast, the cells in the zebrafish contain a small reservoir of black pigmented fluid that, when activated, travels to the skin surface and spreads out, much like the spilling of black ink. The natural dark spots on the surface of the zebrafish therefore appear to get bigger and the desired optical effect is achieved. The changes are usually driven by hormones.

The zebrafish cells were mimicked using two glass microscope slides sandwiching a silicone layer. Two pumps, made from flexible DEs, were positioned on both sides of the slide and were connected to the central system with silicone tubes; one pumping opaque white spirit, the other a mixture of black ink and water.

“Our artificial chromatophores are both scalable and adaptable and can be made into an artificial compliant skin which can stretch and deform, yet still operate effectively. This means they can be used in many environments where conventional ‘hard’ technologies would be dangerous, for example at the physical interface with humans, such as smart clothing,” continued Rossiter.

I wonder what these smart clothes/smart skin would feel like against your personal skin given that we are talking about ‘artificial muscles’. For example, how much movement would your clothing/smart skin have independent of you?

By independent, I mean that everything occurs externally. While we’re not ordinarily conscious of all our physical responses they are stimulated internally and part of a whole body response (even though we may notice only localized responses, e.g., a rash). In the research, there’s an external stimulus and an external response via smart clothes/smart skin.

This is just speculation as I imagine we’re several years away from any field testing of these smart clothes/smart skin, assuming that scientists are able to address all the technical hurdles between a laboratory breakthrough and developing applications.

Thanks to Nanowerk where I first came across this information (May 2, 2012 news item).

Magna Carta for nano?

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The more I investigated this Nano Carta news item on Nanowerk, March 14, 2012, the more confused I’ve become. Here’s the easy part,

Part of a Europe-wide debate about the ethical, social and legal questions associated with nanoscience will take place in Bristol on Tuesday [20 March, 2012].

The debate, featuring a group of Bristol University PhD students from the Bristol Centre for Functional Nanomaterials [BCFN], will help form an ethical code for nanotechnology looking at privacy issues, acceptance, human health, access, liability, regulation and control.

Pupils in Years 10 and 11 at St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School will input their own thoughts after learning about nanotechnology – the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale – as part of an on-going partnership with the University.

The Nanochannels project is funded by the European Commission and involves 20 teachers from eight countries across the continent, each engaging students through the use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and live debates. The Guardian newspaper is a partner in the project and is publishing articles on its Nanotechnology World microsite.

Dr Paul Hill, a science teacher at St Mary Redcliffe, won the grant and established the collaboration with the BCFN. Postgraduate students have since been teaching pupils about the theory and practical challenges of researching nanotechnology, with examples from their own PhD research.

Here’s the press release from the University of Bristol announcing the event.

It all got rather confusing when I started reading about the event elsewhere. The Scientix website notes the UK event is part of a larger series, which started in Tel Aviv (no mention of Nano Cartas or any other Cartas),

Nanochannels School Debate series started

Published on: 31/01/2012

Country: United Kingdom

Topic: Nanotechnology, Project, Event

Target groups: college students, general public, policy makers, primary school students, secondary school students, teachers, trainee teachers

Two school debates in Tel Aviv, Israel, kicked off the series of live discussions among students, researchers, NGOs, industry and the public on the risks and benefits of the use of nanotechnologies in our everyday life.

The Nano Channels website lists all of the events in this series of live debates which range from Israel (as noted) to the UK, France, Italy, Romania, Turkey, Germany, and Austria.

The topic listed for the March 20, 2012 debate for St. Mary Redcliffe and Temple School is listed as ‘Nano sensors for medical diagnostics’.

I then found an announcement of a March 13, 2012 event in this series held in Italy which does mention the Nano Carta, also on the Scientix website,

Nanochannels Live School Debate – Pavullo nel Frignano

Location: Pavullo nel Frignano

Country: Italy

Type of event: Debate

Organizer: Nanochannels

Project: Nanochannels

Target groups: general public, industry, primary school students, researchers, secondary school students, teachers, trainee teachers

Topic: Nanotechnology, Education

Language of event: Italian

A live “role play” debate among students, also with participation from researchers, NGOs, the nanotechnology (NT) industry and the general public, who will discuss a specific issue concerning nanotechnologies and their use in our everyday life.

The outcome of the debate will be a “Nanocarta”, a summary of the debate produced by the students, which will be posted on the Nanochannels website and in social media. Over the school year the Nanochannels students will produce press articles with help from professional journalists. The best ones will be co-edited and published by the Nanochannels press partners: The Guardian, El Mundo and Corriere della Sera.

The debate is organised by the Nanochannel project and its partner school in Pavullo nel Frignano (Italy). The project aims to design and undertake a programme of communication on nanotechnology through a variety of media channels and outreach events.

My best guess is that they are focusing on specific topics in the schools so students can get a grasp of some basic nanotechnology concepts before embarking on a debate about larger issues such as ethics and social impacts.

(I have written about the Nanochannels project previously in my June 14, 2011 posting.)

Finally, I thought it would be interesting to get a definition of the Magna Carta (from the Wikipedia essay),

Magna Carta, also called Magna Carta Libertatum, is an English charter, originally issued in the year 1215 and reissued later in the 13th century in modified versions. The later versions excluded the most direct challenges to the monarch’s authority that had been present in the 1215 charter. The charter first passed into law in 1225; the 1297 version, with the long title (originally in Latin) The Great Charter of the Liberties of England, and of the Liberties of the Forest, still remains on the statute books of England and Wales.

The 1215 charter required King John of England to proclaim certain liberties, and accept that his will was not arbitrary, for example by explicitly accepting that no “freeman” (in the sense of non-serf) could be punished except through the law of the land, a right which is still in existence today.

If there’s a Nano Carta and following on the definition of the Magna Carta, whose will is not arbitrary and in what circumstance? Are nanoparticles being ceded rights? I’m being facetious but I hope they do approach these debates in an imaginative way and with questions that might seem ridiculous as that’s often the best way to stimulate new thinking and ideas.

Bite-size science, not good for us

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I thought it was going to be a news item about how twitter and blogs are ruining science discourse but I’m glad to say I was wrong. The Dec. 28, 2011 news item about an article in the journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science by psychologists Marco Bertamini of the University of Liverpool and Marcus Munafò of the University of Bristol on MedicalXpress focuses on the trend towards shorter science papers,

“We’re not against concision,” says Bertamini. “But there are real risks in this trend toward shorter papers. The main risk is the increased rates of false alarms that are likely to be associated with papers based on less data.”

The article dispatches several claimed advantages of shorter papers. Proponents say they’re easier to read. Perhaps, say the authors, but more articles mean more to keep up with, more reviewing and editing—not less work. Proponents laud the increased influence authors gain from more citations. Precisely, say the two—but two short papers do not equal twice the scientific value of a longer one. Indeed, they might add up to less.

The reason: The smaller the experimental sample the greater the statistical deviations—that is, the greater the inaccuracy of the findings. … Strict word limits, moreover, mean cutting the details about previous research. The new results sound not only surprising but also novel. Write the authors: “A bit of ignorance helps in discovering ‘new’ things.”

I am particularly struck by that bit about cutting details of previous research. This means that reporters/journalists are more likely to be ‘under’ informed and, by extension, the general public (after reading the journalist’s account) not to mention the readers for whom the original research was intended.

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Tag Archives: University of Bristol

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Dance you spectroscopy fool! Dance!

Cardiac pacemakers: Korea’s in vivo demonstration of a self-powered one* and UK’s breath-based approach

danceroom Spectroscopy (dS) or dancing the nano in the UK

Structure of color

Camouflage for everyone

Magna Carta for nano?

Bite-size science, not good for us