One part of Summer I really enjoy is the arrival of fireflies. The Museum of Science has a website where you can keep track of fireflies throughout the Summer and help scientists learn more about their populations. It's called Firefly Watch.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Fireflies
One part of Summer I really enjoy is the arrival of fireflies. The Museum of Science has a website where you can keep track of fireflies throughout the Summer and help scientists learn more about their populations. It's called Firefly Watch.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Thru the Microscope
Some of my favorite art comes directly from science. I'm especially fond of microscopes - both as a tool, and as industrial design. They uncover tiny worlds that move largely unseen and were undiscovered until the invention of this device.
We can thank Robert Hooke for the Microscope, and for uncovering that tiny world.
Read Hooke's Microphagia, complete with drawings of microscopic creatures.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Things in Jars
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of "things in jars". Not only does the science dork in me find preserved organisms wildly interesting (have you ever seen a up close?) but there's something about the aesthetic of preservation that really appeals to the design in me. The variety of glass containers, handwritten labels, and just the sheer number of the collection. Apparently, I'm not alone. Check out the work of Andy Paiko:
While I'm not neat enough to have anything of this caliber in my house, I am fortunate enough to live in an area with many free museums. My favorite is The Naturalist Center in Leesburg, Virginia. While the various Smithsonian buildings in Washington, DC are frequented and crowded, this little gem is very low-key and volunteer run. Not to mention, chock full of things in jars, taxidermy and other examples of the diverse biology of the world.
While I'm not neat enough to have anything of this caliber in my house, I am fortunate enough to live in an area with many free museums. My favorite is The Naturalist Center in Leesburg, Virginia. While the various Smithsonian buildings in Washington, DC are frequented and crowded, this little gem is very low-key and volunteer run. Not to mention, chock full of things in jars, taxidermy and other examples of the diverse biology of the world.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Zombie Rat (hearts)!
As I was driving home from work today I caught part of Science Friday on NPR. If you've never listened, I highly recommend it - as their tagline suggests, it aims to " [make] Science User-Friendly" which is something I can get behind.
At any rate, the story that caught my attention was about ZOMBIE RATS. Well, not really I guess. But they did take a dead rat heart and made it beat again. Pretty amazing, huh? The way they did it is really clever and kind of sci-fi: they took a heart from a dead rat, washed it of its cells, and then put new cells in the "ghost" heart. The new cells grew and the heart started beating (it took a couple of weeks, but still, that's pretty amazing).
As a side note, the heart looks really cool all cleaned up. Kind of like blown glass.
You can read about the science and watch the video here.
At any rate, the story that caught my attention was about ZOMBIE RATS. Well, not really I guess. But they did take a dead rat heart and made it beat again. Pretty amazing, huh? The way they did it is really clever and kind of sci-fi: they took a heart from a dead rat, washed it of its cells, and then put new cells in the "ghost" heart. The new cells grew and the heart started beating (it took a couple of weeks, but still, that's pretty amazing).
As a side note, the heart looks really cool all cleaned up. Kind of like blown glass.
You can read about the science and watch the video here.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Aesthetics and the Collector's Cabinet
I am both a scientist and an artist - and while those may seem like two opposing identifiers - there are rare times when I find something that satisfies both of these aspects of my personality. Artfully done biological collections are one of these things.
The Victorian Era gave rise to a fantastic hobby among distinguished gentlemen of the time - that is the collection of various objects of natural history. The measure of a dapper fellow's collection was a social status marker, and thanks to their ego, there are several rather impressive private assemblages of bones, hides, fossils, and preserved specimens across the biological kingdom.
I am shamelessly fascinated by such collections. The Walters Art Museum has a room which, rather successfully, uses the painting "The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet" to mimic what one of these private hordes would look like. This got me very excited, gentle reader, because I am a huge sucker for natural wonders. Corals, fossils, stones, bones, leopard skins, moose heads, bugs pinned in boxes, microscopes, dried flora, and slimey things in jars! All displayed with the touch of an artist's design.
Not only do these collections satisfy me on a intellectual, scientific level but there's something about the aesthetic of these things that my brain really indulges. The items themselves are beautiful and interesting - the textures of skulls, the construction of insects, the intricate patterns of corals. But the design of the objects that surround them - slide microscopes, various sized bottles with caps and corks, boxes with glass tops, magnifying glasses - makes me pretty giddy, too.
It should be noted that there is a significant difference between this highly aesthetic Victorian Era style of collecting and the more legitimate scientific cataloging of nature. There is a really exciting Naturalist Center that is a part of the Smithsonian Institute that serves as a public study center of such collections. Here there are hundreds of preserved animals - tagged and named and stored in drawers for scientific study and comparison. While this kind of collection lacks the artful presentation, the sort of playful "isn't this cool and gorgeous and fantastic?" aspect, I could still spend about a thousand hours sifting through the collection.
Apparently I'm not the only dork who thinks biology is beautiful. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is housing an exhibit called Transitions: Photographs by Robert Creamer. He's also a big fan of the Naturalist Center (using some of their specimens as subjects) and also takes fantastic photographs of flora in various stages of decay. Now that Spring is slowly creeping back into our lives I expect there to be plenty of opportunities to appreciate the aesthetics of nature and to work on a Collector's Cabinet of my own.
(orginally posted 3/16/07 at http://www.antharia.com/blog/)
The Victorian Era gave rise to a fantastic hobby among distinguished gentlemen of the time - that is the collection of various objects of natural history. The measure of a dapper fellow's collection was a social status marker, and thanks to their ego, there are several rather impressive private assemblages of bones, hides, fossils, and preserved specimens across the biological kingdom.
I am shamelessly fascinated by such collections. The Walters Art Museum has a room which, rather successfully, uses the painting "The Archdukes Albert and Isabella Visiting a Collector's Cabinet" to mimic what one of these private hordes would look like. This got me very excited, gentle reader, because I am a huge sucker for natural wonders. Corals, fossils, stones, bones, leopard skins, moose heads, bugs pinned in boxes, microscopes, dried flora, and slimey things in jars! All displayed with the touch of an artist's design.
Not only do these collections satisfy me on a intellectual, scientific level but there's something about the aesthetic of these things that my brain really indulges. The items themselves are beautiful and interesting - the textures of skulls, the construction of insects, the intricate patterns of corals. But the design of the objects that surround them - slide microscopes, various sized bottles with caps and corks, boxes with glass tops, magnifying glasses - makes me pretty giddy, too.
It should be noted that there is a significant difference between this highly aesthetic Victorian Era style of collecting and the more legitimate scientific cataloging of nature. There is a really exciting Naturalist Center that is a part of the Smithsonian Institute that serves as a public study center of such collections. Here there are hundreds of preserved animals - tagged and named and stored in drawers for scientific study and comparison. While this kind of collection lacks the artful presentation, the sort of playful "isn't this cool and gorgeous and fantastic?" aspect, I could still spend about a thousand hours sifting through the collection.
Apparently I'm not the only dork who thinks biology is beautiful. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History is housing an exhibit called Transitions: Photographs by Robert Creamer. He's also a big fan of the Naturalist Center (using some of their specimens as subjects) and also takes fantastic photographs of flora in various stages of decay. Now that Spring is slowly creeping back into our lives I expect there to be plenty of opportunities to appreciate the aesthetics of nature and to work on a Collector's Cabinet of my own.
(orginally posted 3/16/07 at http://www.antharia.com/blog/)
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