The contents of this blog are the personal opinions of the author, independent of any organizations with which she is affiliated, and should not be construed as professional advice.
A few weeks ago, I was notified that if I wished to continue blogging at Scienceblogs/National Geographic, I'd have to agree to new terms. After considering these terms, as well as the decision to ban pseudonymous blogging, I don't feel that the new management and I are on the same page. I have therefore decided to leave Scienceblogs.
I've had to put BioE on hiatus a few times over the past few years anyway, as my career moves in a different direction, and the odds are that my posts will be infrequent in the future. So it's as good a time to leave as any.
You can find me in the future at bioephemera.com - BioE's original home. I don't know what will happen to my archive of posts here; I'd prefer they remain in place so as not to disturb the vast network of permalinks on the interwebz, but I don't control that. If they are deleted, I'll try to archive them elsewhere.
I hope it goes without saying that I wish success to Scienceblogs and the remaining staff and bloggers. I would like to thank them for providing BioE with a great community for three years.
I would also like to thank all of my readers/peers/commenters/content-finders who kept this great conversation going. Remember what Dorothy Parker said: "The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
A few months ago I got an email from Zachtronics, creators of the Codex of Alchemical Engineering, about the new indie game called SpaceChem. It was billed as "an obscenely addictive, design-based puzzle game about building machines and fighting monsters in the name of science." What's not to love?
This video from Xperia Studio very effectively conveys how data visualization can both leverage and challenge our conceptions of "reality." The night sky we've seen since childhood, like everything else we see, is just a tiny slice of the spectrum - only what we can perceive with our limited physiology. An app that lets us "see" otherwise invisible wavelengths is not merely a prosthesis that cleverly enhances our sensory perceptions, it's a tool to expand our worldview, by reminding us that what we see is only a limited subset of the whole: we could as easily see quite a different world, and quite a different night sky.
Full disclosure: I'm mad that I can't get this app for my iPhone! But if you're an Android user, you can try the free Invisible Universe app here.
If you can't get the app, you can still enjoy the video, which is really very pretty in the best "science-is-awesome" sense. Josh Peek nicely captures the addictive nature of research: "probably every six months or so, I get the sort of hair-standing-on end thrill of knowing something new about the universe that nobody else knows yet." Yes, I remember that feeling . . . except the things I discovered involved screwed-up mutant fruit fly neurons - not quite so awesome as galaxies and cosmic radiation and freaky supernovae. But I digress - how deliciously steampunky is that observatory wheel apparatus? And watch for the Darwin fish cameo! :)
Kate MacDowell sculpts partially dissected frogs, decaying bodies with exposed skeletons, and viscera invaded by tentacles or ants. It's the imagery of nightmares, death metal music videos, or that tunnel scene in the original Willy Wonka (not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing. . . ). But her medium - minimalist, translucent white porcelain - renders her viscerally disturbing subject matter graceful, even elegant. Some of her pieces, like Sparrow, below, play off the porcelain's resemblance to delicate bleached bone. In others, the permanence of the porcelain generates tension with the ephemeral forms it depicts - like insects, leaves, and flowers.
Sparrow, 2008
hand built porcelain, cone 6 glaze
MacDowell's work explores how the "romantic ideal of union with the natural world conflicts with our contemporary impact on the environment." In Sparrow, the chimera of a human skeleton inside a broken bird-body has an apparently clear message: what we do to our world, we do to ourselves. We are biologically and ecologically interrelated. But in other pieces, like the installation Quiet as a Mouse, the message is not so clear.
Quiet as a Mouse, 2011
hand built porcelain, cone 6 glaze
is based on images of the Vacanti mouse which became an online visual meme and sparked heated discussion about genetic engineering, animal testing and various related ideas, often based on a misunderstanding of the image that was further distorted by the online game of telephone (for example, human genetic material was not used in the experiment, the "ear" was a synthetic construct).
Though the ear-mouse is at first glance a real-world embodiment of MacDowell's human-animal chimeras, that's only the (incorrect) interpretation the public readily placed on it. Yes, it was a mouse with a genetically compromised immune system, but it was not genetically engineered to grow a human ear, nor were human cells used in the ear. Rather, it carried the illusion of a human ear - a proof of concept, a biomedical tool intended to eventually transform our own bodies. Thinking about how the ear-mouse was misunderstood/understood by the public prompts us to consider where our own first reactions to MacDowell's other artworks are justified, or if we need to look again.
Kate MacDowell graciously agreed to answer a few questions about how she uses anatomical and biological imagery in her work; her answers (and more of her work) are below the fold.
Last week, I had my long-awaited vacation semi-ruined when, thanks to Hurricane Irene, my flight back from the West Coast was cancelled. I had to rent a car and drive across the country in a rush - not my favorite way to spend three and a half days. But based on what I saw passing through New York, and what I've heard about the damage in Vermont, I can't complain: flooding has overturned homes, isolated entire towns, and destroyed everything some families own.
Vermonters are a notoriously self-sufficient bunch, and I haven't seen that much publicity for disaster relief, so I asked my friend -- a native Vermonter who drove home a few days ago to help clean up and deliver supplies -- what I should do. These were some of her suggestions for simple ways to give:
Vermont Foodbank: Donate $10 to the Vermont Foodbank to pay for food that will go to food banks in communities most impacted by Irene. Text the word FOODNOW to 52000 to make a $10 donation that will show up on your next cellphone bill (this was even easier than PayPal!)
Vermont Irene Flood Relief Fund: raising money for flood relief for small Vermont businesses (click on "donate" in the top bar for PayPal and other options)
I know for many of us, money is tight (you would not believe what it costs to rent a car one way cross-country), but do consider giving something if you can spare it.
I used to have a beautiful gold Japanese folding screen, which was purchased by my great-grandmother's feisty sister on a trip in the 1920s. I loved the gold patina and the surprisingly modern impact it had on my wall. At the moment, it's loaned to a friend, but looking at Greg Dunn's artwork, I couldn't help but be reminded of the best aspects of my screen: the gold leaf, crisp black patterns, and way that the scene seemed half natural, half abstract.
The biggest twist Greg, a 6th year graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, places on the screenpainting tradition? He paints neurons, as well as trees and branches. Often it's hard to tell Greg's neurons from other natural features: his cortical neurons look like delicate spring branches, and his retinal neurons are reminiscent of rosehips. At a first glance, could you tell if his Hippocampus, below, was a slice of stained brain or a quarter of a dandelion?
The UCSD Neuroscience department commissioned a series of Greg's paintings depicting hippocampus, retina, cortex, and Purkinje neurons. The collection is just stunning, and although you can't purchase the originals, you can get large (16x16) prints for just over $120. I want!
Greg, a self-taught artist, will finish his PhD soon; he plans to make art an integral part of his career. I wish him much well-deserved success (and hope he doesn't run out of prints before I can buy mine.) Note that he will consider commissions, so if you want to get a particular kind of neuron as a unique gift for a researcher, neurologist, or graduate student, you should contact him and ask.
