Posts tagged science
Jeliza Patterson
If we don’t build the land, somebody else will and the science will get discovered. If we don’t explore the moons, somebody else will. It will get discovered. That’s one of the hallmarks of science that distinguishes it from art. In science, if you don’t do it, somebody else will. Whereas in art, if Beethoven didn’t compose the Ninth Symphony, no one else before or after is going to compose the Ninth Symphony that he composed, no one else is going to paint Starry Night by van Gogh. So science, when done properly, is never owned by one nation or another.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, Competition in Science
I love this. And I also love that he comes up with that marvelous distinction between science and art, which supports the cool factor of both.
(Source: , via dresdencodak)
New wind turbine is more efficient and bird friendly
Nadine Swart’s effervescent macro photography.
![mad-as-a-marine-biologist:
“Today, bottom trawlers track down fish at depths of up to 1500m to compensate for the depletion of shallow water resources. Their gigantic nets rake up the bottom of the ocean, destroying virtually all of the deep sea habitat and the fauna it hosts.
Many deep sea creatures are already in danger of extinction. Without government subsidies, deep sea trawlers would operate at a loss.
Deep-sea bottom trawling: Let’s end this massacre of biodiversity.”
Follow Bloom Associations campaign against destructive fishing practices here.
Bloom Associations, though over shadowed by the disappointment of Rio +20, won an epic David vs. Goliath style court case against Intermarché who claimed to “[play] a determinant role in maintaining sustainable fishing in France, the preservation and renewal of marine resources.”
Intermarché belongs to the French group, Les Mousquetaires, which also owns a large Brittany-based trawler fleet that supplies its well-stocked fish counters.
Claire Nouvian, of Bloom, called the company up on their claim that its fishing practices down to 1,500 meters, or about 5,000 feet, caused less damage than a hiker’s footprint on a beach.
“That would be laughable if it didn’t sow doubt among officials and legislators,” she said. “This total scorn for truth bogs down the debate in technical detail and suggests there is scientific controversy, which there is not.”
She cited the gold-standard International Council for the Exploitation of the Sea, which classed all French and European Union deep-sea catch as beyond safe biological limits.
The French court ordered Intermarché to stop the ad campaign and also drop a logo that is similar to the Marine Stewardship Council seal of approval.
How cool is this, and how cool is she! Congratulations to Bloom - your small NGO’s huge victory is an inspiration to all. If you have a voice, and the determination you have all the tools you need to make a difference.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m6foph7qRl1qeigaco1_500.jpg)
“Today, bottom trawlers track down fish at depths of up to 1500m to compensate for the depletion of shallow water resources. Their gigantic nets rake up the bottom of the ocean, destroying virtually all of the deep sea habitat and the fauna it hosts.
Many deep sea creatures are already in danger of extinction. Without government subsidies, deep sea trawlers would operate at a loss.
Deep-sea bottom trawling: Let’s end this massacre of biodiversity.”
Follow Bloom Associations campaign against destructive fishing practices here.
Bloom Associations, though over shadowed by the disappointment of Rio +20, won an epic David vs. Goliath style court case against Intermarché who claimed to “[play] a determinant role in maintaining sustainable fishing in France, the preservation and renewal of marine resources.”
Intermarché belongs to the French group, Les Mousquetaires, which also owns a large Brittany-based trawler fleet that supplies its well-stocked fish counters.
Claire Nouvian, of Bloom, called the company up on their claim that its fishing practices down to 1,500 meters, or about 5,000 feet, caused less damage than a hiker’s footprint on a beach.
“That would be laughable if it didn’t sow doubt among officials and legislators,” she said. “This total scorn for truth bogs down the debate in technical detail and suggests there is scientific controversy, which there is not.”
She cited the gold-standard International Council for the Exploitation of the Sea, which classed all French and European Union deep-sea catch as beyond safe biological limits.
The French court ordered Intermarché to stop the ad campaign and also drop a logo that is similar to the Marine Stewardship Council seal of approval.
How cool is this, and how cool is she! Congratulations to Bloom - your small NGO’s huge victory is an inspiration to all. If you have a voice, and the determination you have all the tools you need to make a difference.
Many adults are put off when youngsters pose scientific questions. Children ask why the sun is yellow, or what a dream is, or how deep you can dig a hole, or when is the world’s birthday, or why we have toes. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before a five-year-old, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know? Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys many adults. A few more experiences like this, and another child has been lost to science.
There are many better responses. If we have an idea of the answer, we could try to explain. If we don’t, we could go to the encyclopedia or the library. Or we might say to the child: “I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.”
Anne Lindberg uses thousands of strings to play with our perception in her large scale installations.
Lindberg on her work:
Neurologists have determined that the old brain holds the seat of our most primal understandings of the world. Goodwill, security, fear, anxiety, self-protection, gravity, sexuality, and compulsive behaviors generate from this lower cerebral core.
My sculpture and drawings inhabit a non-verbal place resonant with such primal human conditions. Systemic and non-representational, these works are subtle, rhythmic, abstract, and immersive. I find beauty and disturbance through shifts in tool, layering and material to create passages of tone, density, speed, path and frequency within a system. In recent room-sized installations, I discovered an optical and spatial phenomenon that excites me as the work spans the outer reaches of our peripheral vision. The work references physiological systems – such as heartbeat, respiration, neural paths, equilibrium - and psychological states.
Iceland lives up to its name in these awesome photos of ice caves by Kanya Hanklang
Julian Pacaud creates illustrations that somehow manage to appear both retro and futuristic at the same time. This may be explained by his bio:
I’m a french illustrator, currently living in Le Mans, France. Before becoming an illustrator, I was, by turns : an astrophysician, an international snooker player, a hypnotist and an esperanto teacher. I hope I can someday have enough free time to devote myself to my real passion : time travel.
Glass Frog
(via staceythinx)
I would like this for my yard.
Deemed “architecture in motion,” this electromechanical pachyderm is a moving steel cathedral, constructed from recycled materials and American Tulipwood.
Made in France, the elephant is one of the Machines of the Isle of Nantes (Les Machines de l’île), an artistic and cultural project created in the warehouses of the former shipyards in Nantes, France. The elephant is 12 meters high, 8 meters wide and can carry 49 passengers at a rate of one-third kilometer per mile…along the banks of the Loire River. It was the intention of the artists, (François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice) to conceptualize travel through time “at the crossroads of the imaginary worlds of Jules Verne and the mechanical universe of Leonardo da Vinci.”
Selected work by Alicia Hunsicker.
From her statement:
Hunsicker’s transformative compositions recontextualize the inner structures of the human body exposing them in a colorful, alluring abstracted landscape. In them we are drawn into a thoughtful world where we are asked deep and meaningful questions and where we are shown the exquisite fragility of life.
Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions was self-published in 1843 by botanist and photographer Anna Atkins. Atkins may have been the first woman to create a photograph and to publish a book with accompanying photographic illustrations. That makes her the first female photographer, folks.
Cyanotype is a type of contact printing (invented by the interesting-in-his-own-right John Herschel for blueprint copying, and brought to photographic art by Atkins), and Atkins created her photograms of algae by placing dried specimens directly atop the paper for exposure.
(via staceythinx)
Vincent Callebaut Architecte designs for the future, a future that requires sustainability to address the consequences of a changing climate. Their project Hydrogenase was created to meet the need for a sustainable transport system. To accomplish this they have designed airships powered by seaweed.
Vincent Callebaut Architecte describes their project:
HYDROGENASE, ALGAE FARM TO RECYCLE CO2 FOR BIO-HYDROGEN AIRSHIP
Between engineering and biology, Hydrogenase is one of the first projects of bio-mimicry which draws its inspiration from the beauty and the shapes of the nature, but also and especially from the qualities of its materials and its self-manufacturing processes. The new green revolution is really in progress and enables us to design the air mobility of the foil after shock, 100% self-sufficient in energy and zero carbon emission! This inhabitated vertical aircraft inaugures a clean and ethic mobility to meet the needs of the population en distress touched by the natural and sanitary catastrophes, and all that without any runway! Its architecture is subversive and fundamentally critic towards the ways of living of our contemporary society that we have to reinvent totally! Let’s take off thanks to biofuels and let’s propel to the eco-responsible transport of the future!
Read more…
(Source: alaynyala)
This eerie and mysterious blood-red waterfall is located in remote Antarctica. The red color is partially the result of saltwater tainted with iron oxide, but the real mystery of these falls is what lives in the water. Water samples contain almost no oxygen, but at least 17 different types of alien-like microbes have been identified slithering around in the blood-like water. Scientists surmise that they survive via a metabolic process never observed in nature that utilizes sulfate as a respiratory catalyst with ferric ions, metabolizing trace levels of ancient organic matter trapped underneath Antarctica’s vast glaciers.
Check out some of the planet’s most amazing waterfalls.
