glass

New species of "glass frogs" discovered in Peru

dr. dolittle — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 13:24:11 +0000

New species of "glass frogs" discovered in Peru

Researchers in Peru have discovered four new species of tiny so-called "glass frogs" (family: Centrolenidae).

Centrolene charapita: with the yellow splotches on its back, this species was aptly named after little yellow chili peppers. Their hindlegs also had fleshy little zigzag-like protuberances whose purpose is unknown.

Figure 4 from Twomey et al. Zootaxa, 2014.

Cochranella guayasamini: This species is mostly green with yellow encircling its eyes. Interestingly, the tadpoles begin as a reddish pink color. Since they live in streambeds that are low in oxygen, this coloration may reflect the numerous blood vessels in their skin, although that remains just a hypothesis as studies of glass frog tadpoles are rare.

Figure 19 and 21 from Twomey et al., Zootaxa. 2014

Chimerella corleone: Yes, it is indeed named after the famed character from The Godfather. This tiny frog is only 2cm long and has green bones, which they suspect may arise from build-up of the green pigment in bile, biliverdin.

Chimerella corleone photograph by Evan Twomey

Hyalinobatrachium anachoretus: This new species was discovered in the cloud forest of Peru at 2,050 meters (6,725 feet), which is reportedly an unusually high altitude for other frogs in this genus.

Photograph of Hyalinobatrachium anachoretus by Evan Tworney

What is currently unknown is why these species evolved transparent bodies.

Sources:

National Geographic

Twomey E, Delia J, Castroviejo-Fisher S. A review of Northern Peruvian glassfrogs (Centrolenidae), with the description of four new remarkable species. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.3851.1.1

dr. dolittle Sun, 08/31/2014 - 09:24

Tags

Amazing discovery
Yet another proof of how adaptive organisms become over millions of years…
Hard to believe sometimes but absolutely true to me.
There is a common theme of utilizing the animals natural proteins to enhance its camouflage, in this case the green bones!

As a lover of nature it is really amazing to hear that in the century we live in with all the global warming, animal poaching and pollution with hundreds of species becoming extinct each year that there are still new species developing and being discovered making our ecosystems grow.
It truly blows my mind how adaptive species are to their environment and that species are still evolving in our modern lives.
15004512

Luke Jerram's glass sculptures of microbes

sciencepunk — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:11:40 +0000

Luke Jerram's glass sculptures of microbes

This weekend I visited the Trauma exhibition at London's GV Art gallery. The pieces all relate in some way to physical and psychological trauma inflicted on the body, by a range of artists working alone and in collaboration with medics.

Some of the items are underwhelming verging on irritating - placing histological slides on a plinth does a disservice both to art (because there is no emotional narrative contained within) and to science, because it implies that the inherent wonder and beauty of science is absent unless it is repackaged as a gallery exhibit. (Hello? Museums present objects of science all the time, and they are spaces filled with wonder and beauty).

There are, though, some wonderful pieces that make the trip to West London worthwhile: the annual self-portraits of a man suffering Alzheimer's that chart the destruction of his talent with terrifying effect; and (pictured above) the exquisite glass sculptures of microbes - both real and imagined - created by Luke Jerram.

Trauma is free and can be seen at the GV Art gallery at 49 Chiltern Street, London, until February 18.

sciencepunk Sun, 12/18/2011 - 18:11

Tags

The Information Diet - five ways to improve your data consumption [SciencePunk]

sb admin — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:35:56 +0000

The Information Diet - five ways to improve your data consumption [SciencePunk]

Last week I had a visit from a friend of mine, who was on something of a farewell tour. After several years of planning, he'd packed in his dependable but much-begrudged corporate job, and was setting sail for Asia, to see more of the world. He's already seen much more of the world than most people. Not because he was well connected or rich, but because he made it his life's mission to tour the forgotten, the hidden and the forbidden places of the world. I mention this because if there ever was a man to take life advice from, it is this one, and he put into words something I've been pondering for a while now.

"It's called," he told me, over the noise of the pub, "an information diet." It seems like an odd concept, even a heretical one. I am by my own admission an information glutton. I suck up huge volumes of information like a baleen whale, sieve it, swallow it, gulp again. I have a cascade of feeds I never have time to read, and I'm getting serious indigestion. Seeing and sharing is easy in an always-online world, and addictive to boot. I'm not the first one to turn a critical eye on my sources of information - the phrase "information diet" was coined long ago; prior to the internet there was no shortage of voices railing against the popular medium as an unfit and corrupting influence, whether it be comics, video games, television, MTV, books, and, we must presume, scrolls and slates in some early day.

This is what your RSS feed looks like

In fact, the information diet is such a popular idea, there's a book out next year on the subject, called, er, The Information Diet. Lifehacker have run a piece on the concept too. Now don't get me wrong, I attach no moral value to the idea of an information diet. I don't care if you follow one or not. If you want to guzzle, guzzle. But personally, I've become aware that a great deal of the information I consume is useless garbage, and time-consuming garbage at that, and I want to find a more streamlined and enjoyable way to consume media.

Thing is, at the moment, nobody is really getting into the nitty-gritty of an information diet. What does it look like in practice? So I thought I'd open the floor and throw some ideas about. Here are some of the things I've done in an effort to improve my information diet.

#5 Diversify your menu
Probably the most obvious option, and it stems directly from five important words: Turn Off That Damn Computer. I'm trying to repurpose my computer as a tool for finding the information I want, rather than being the plate it's served on. I'm trying to make time for cinema (for the whole experience of cinema - finding a friend, setting a date, choosing a film, buying overpriced candy...), for theatre, for pub chats, for radio, for half-remembered tales over coffee, for walking tours, for wandering the neighbourhood, for fiction, for newspapers, comics, crosswords; for paper. There are stories everywhere, I tell myself, and most of them are better for the amount of effort you need to put in to hear them.

#4 Find a better solution to boredom
Now that I'm commuting again, I've realised how even a short journey on a bus inspires the kind of preparation that would make polar explorers blush. Only it's not the weather I'm protecting myself against, but the prospect of boredom. Sometimes I'd only be happy boarding once armoured with a newspaper, book, work notes, smartphone and iPod. First I tried rationing myself to one "entertainment" medium per trip, since then I've taken a notebook and used the time to write down ideas for stories and projects; and to simply take in my surroundings rather than isolate myself from them. Hippie-shit I know, but at the end of it I have a notebook with cool ideas in it, and a quieter mind.

#3 Damn the social network
I've never made a secret of that fact I hate Facebook with a passion. It tries to be an email system, a photo sharing site, a chat site, and many other things, and it does all of them pretty badly. However, it's also the only way I'll remain in contact with certain far flung people, so for now I am stuck with it.

I've tried to quarantine myself from its lures, and have turned off all email updates. I never use the chat option. I do not make albums. My privacy values are at their highest setting, a tall fence to ward off unwelcome visitors. Instead of communicating through status updates, I'm trying to call people, arrange to meet people. It's bloody obvious, but social networks are a suppressant for the appetite of social interaction, not a meal.

Getting rid of Twitter is a dicier option. For its distraction and time consumption, it's also a powerful tool. I could live without it, but I'd be worse off, all in all. For now I've turned off all email updates; and Twitter themselves have already poured turpentine over that candy-coated crack that was the retweeted_of_mine button, so praise be to social networks who make their services harder to use.

#2 Decentralise your media consumption
This is a bit of a heretical idea too - technology is geared towards central entertainment systems for our homes. But you know what? They are hateful, terrible devices. Ten years ago, if I'd wanted to listen to music, my flow chart would have looked like this:

SWITCH ON STEREO > INSERT CD > PRESS PLAY

Now it looks something like this

SWITCH ON PC > WAIT TO BOOT > LOG IN > MORE BOOTING > UPDATES START ROLLING > CLICK ON ITUNES > WAIT SEVERAL MINUTES WHILE IT BOOTS > GET BORED, OPEN EMAIL/BROWSER > ITUNES UPDATE REQUIRED > START DOWNLOAD > START CLICKING ON FEEDS > ITUNES UPDATE DOWNLOADED > INSTALLING > RESTARTING ITUNES, MORE WAITING > ITUNES OPEN > ! WINDOWS UPDATE FINISHED, MANDATORY REBOOT...

Ad nauseum. And ultimately, I end up sat in front of my computer for an hour dicking about, when all I wanted was to play some music. I'm distractible, I know, but it's a trait that won't change. So, to that end, I have purchased a very unfashionable clock radio. It plays music, from the airwaves! It also has an iPod dock so I can listen to my own music. That's all it does. One button, instant music. I haven't quite built up the courage to downgrade from a smart phone to a regular one, because I get lost too much and I like having Google Maps in my pocket, but I'm warming to the idea.

#1 Burn your TV
There is no greater advice I could give to any person to improve their life, than to get rid of their TV. It's not that I despise TV programs (we can all agree that the majority is utter shite, but there are gems). It's that television watching is an open-ended activity that automatically expands to fill all the time you allow it, and usually more. Programs are intentionally constructed to quickly draw you in and keep you watching; they demand your attention and give you little for it. If you stop watching TV, you'll soon find you have time for all those things you never get a chance to do. Boredom is a great motivator. I have a simple check that pretty much destroyed my ability to sit and watch TV: I ask myself "If you saw this in the TV schedule, would you have made a point to watch it?". It's not enough for TV to be enjoyable. You need to make that conscious cost-benefit analysis: is it worth your time? This mantra is a great immunity from that time-eating rogue. Now I find it very difficult to watch TV, even when I own one. I like the police chase shows: you can switch on half way through while you eat dinner, understand perfectly what's going on, and switch off when you're done eating, because you already know how it ends. Perfect disposable TV.

FIN

So there it is, a long ranty stream-of-consciousness on improving your digital menu. Which you've just sat and read on your computer. Ho ho. I hope it was worth it, that SciencePunk was a nutritious amuse-bouche for your daily dining. Leave a comment, then go outside and play.

sb admin Sun, 11/20/2011 - 12:35

Tags

Cordyceps in glass

awild — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:19:21 +0000

Cordyceps in glass

You may remember Wesley Fleming, the glass artist I blogged about last year. It seems he's accomplished a remarkable new piece: a leafcutter ant infected with a parasitic Cordyceps fungus. As far as I know this is the first Cordyceps ever created from glass.

If you'd like to see it in person, this and some of Fleming's other pieces will be on display at the Racine Art Museum this summer.

What is Cordyceps, you ask? Watch:

awild Tue, 03/16/2010 - 05:19

Tags

very nice!!! but they look like they are made from creamy chocolate... mmmm

Stunning! Amazing craftsmanship! Glass is certainly not an easy medium to work with.

Utterly cool, both the art and the Attenborough clip!

My brain just exploded from "OMGSOCOOL" thanks to that clip.

OMGSOCOOL!!!!!!

Why do they always show Paraponera whenever they want to talk about Cordyceps? I've seen so many pictures of Paraponera being infected, and now this.

Yeah, that's true. I'm guessing it's the sheer size of the ant. Not only are Paraponera super-obvious, most general wildlife photographers can shoot them without the specialized macro gear needed for most ants.

Alex - thanks for posting this!

Apparently paraponera was chosen because the artist has a history with them and has no imagination after having watched that clip. I say that as the artist, of course LOL!

I'm glad no one commented on the liberties I took with the cordyceps, itself ;-)

Exquisite Glass Insects

awild — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:18:33 +0000

Exquisite Glass Insects

A comment left on this blog last week alerted me to the sublime glasswork of artist Wesley Fleming.Â Wow. Not only are the pieces aesthetically stunning, they are also largely anatomically accurate.Â Legs attached to the right spots, tarsal segments counted out, tibial spurs in place.

If you have a few minutes, do yourself a favor and visit Fleming's gallery.

awild Thu, 02/26/2009 - 07:18

Tags

These are so amazing! I have such respect for artists that can create lifelike things out of glass. Wowzer.

http://krakenmosaics.com

http://krakenmosaics.etsy.com

These are amazing!

http://www.alderart.com/artist/html/david_townsend/david_townsend_3.htm and https://www.gttobacco.com/secure/html/item_details.asp?id=585 for more of those.

StickyBot and Directional Adhesion

zooillogix — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:53:29 +0000

StickyBot and Directional Adhesion

StickyBot is a robot designed by researchers at Stanford Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab as part of the Robots in Scansorial Environments project (RiSE). The robotic gecko tests their hypotheses about the "requirements for mobility on vertical surfaces using dry adhesion. The main point is that we don't need more adhesion, we need controllable adhesion."

The site boils down the "key ingredients" as follows:
* hierarchical compliance for conforming at centimeter, millimeter and micrometer scales,
* anisotropic dry adhesive materials and structures so that we can control adhesion by controlling shear,
* distributed active force control that works with compliance and anisotropy to achieve stability.

In layman's terms, all of the above means someone should buy us one for Christmas.

zooillogix Mon, 07/07/2008 - 04:53

Tags

Robots in Scansorial Environments

Stanford Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab

Video

That is just too cool. Someone should buy me one for Christmas, too! Stanford needs to investigate the toy market; they could fund lots of research that way...

That is really wierd and neat at the same time!

thanks..

Telescopes 100 Years Ago: A Story

esiegel — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:05:39 +0000

Telescopes 100 Years Ago: A Story

I was doing a little research into the history of telescopes, and it was about a century ago that they finally realized how much more potential light-gathering power reflecting telescopes had as compared to the older refracting telescopes. On Mt. Wilson in California, astronomer George Ellery Hale and optician George Willis Ritchey (back then everybody was named George -- look it up!) were embarking on a program to build large reflecting telescopes as the wave-of-the-future of Astronomy.

But even before this telescope was operational, Hale and Ritchey were thinking of bigger and bigger telescopes. They had a design to build a 100 inch reflector, and got a grant of $45,000 from J.D. Hooker (not the botanist, the Los Angeles merchant) to start work on it (this was in 1906). Now, to build a reflecting telescope, the most important thing you need is the giant mirror. You know, something like this:

Well, back in those days, $45,000 was hard to come by. So they needed to make sure they got a good glass blank for Ritchey to grind and polish. So he called up St. Gobain glassworks in France and said he needed a 100 inch blank. Well, they had never made a mirror that big before (nobody had). They tried to make a mold and pour glass into it in a single cast, but failed and realized that they needed too much glass (about 9,000 pounds) to do it at once. So they poured it from three separate sources into the mold. Now, because of the way cooling works, they wound up with a bunch of bubbles throughout the mirror, especially at the edges where the three sections met. When Ritchey got the mirror in 1910, he refused to work on it, saying both that grinding and polishing with those bubbles would cause a crack or breakage, and that the mirror wouldn't focus light properly anyway. So he called for recasting the mirror. And he called to have it redone three different times. After seeing the other blanks, he had no choice but to go ahead and work with the mirror full of bubbles, convinced it wouldn't work. This is what the mirror looked like when he was done:

Finally, by 1917, the mirror was installed in a telescope housing facility in Mt. Wilson, and was ready for first light. The date was scheduled for November 2, 1917. Here's the story you won't get from any of the official websites. They had a bunch of reporters and press corps in the room during the day; many pictures of the mirror and telescope were taken. Some people were skeptical that this wouldn't work because of the lack of quality of the mirror, and that the telescope just wouldn't focus properly. Nightfall came, and the telescope pointed up at the sky, eager to snap the first image with the world's newest, largest, and most powerful telescope. But the image wouldn't focus! Hours passed, the sky darkened completely, and the press corps trickled away, disgusted at the abysmal failure of the scope. What good is having three times the light-gathering power if you can't focus your image?!

Finally, only the telescope operator was left as night wore on. What he saw happen was remarkable. You see, with the dome open during the day, the glass had heated up with the Sun shining on it, and expanded. The mirror needed to cool off before it would focus properly. As the night wore on, the aberration decreased and decreased, and about 5 hours after everyone else had left, everything slipped perfectly into focus. Ritchey had ground the mirror to perfection, and the bubbles were just so that they were of absolutely no consequence. The press corps had left, but the telescope worked perfectly. Over the next decade, Hubble and Humason used it to discover the expansion of the Universe, and to determine that the "spiral nebulae" were actually other, distant galaxies! And the rest, as they say, is history. (Thanks to Chris Martin for contributing big chunks of information to this!)

esiegel Tue, 04/15/2008 - 20:05

I love the way you've written this article. Like an interesting story you've traced the history of the telescope here.

Vanessa @ Future Trends in Astronomy

Nice work. A real help to remember historical facts about this great eye aimed at the sky. Thanks so much.

You Can Cut Glass With a Regular Old Pair of Scissors

grrlscientist — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 06:59:58 +0000

You Can Cut Glass With a Regular Old Pair of Scissors

tags: glass, scissors, streaming video

Who would have thought?
It's like something Homer Simpson would try.

I can see how this could come in handy for some kind of art piece. [1:15]

grrlscientist Wed, 09/12/2007 - 02:59

Tags

For such a neat video you would think the maker would have realized you can't see the glass, 'cause it's clear and being held above water in a sink.

Would someone see if this can be easily replicated? (I don't have any glass around other than Pyrex and what's in my windows.)

It's interesting, but, as noted, it's hard to see what's really going on. You can, however, see lots of small waves on the water's surface while he's cutting. I would like to see how complex a shape can be cut.

This is almost certainly an illusion. The person in the video is probably swapping pre-cut pieces when submerging them in water. You can't cut glass with scissors since when you cut something with scissors, the material on each side of the blade must move in opposite direction by the amount the blades overlap. Glass, at temperatures where water is a liquid, is not sufficiently elastic to accomodate this and will shatter. It has nothing to do with resonance.

total bullshit. Doesn't happen. Wanna buy a bridge?

isn't someone going to try this and prove it one way or another?

(the only piece of glass i have is located in my windows or my bathroom mirror, which i would have to break out of their frames and i am sure the landlord -- the bastard -- would charge me double for it if i started chopping them up -- IF i can chop them up, that is! -- and i don't have any scissors at all).

so come on, someone, dooo eeet! and report back here.

Actually I think it works for the same reason glass cutters in a glass shop brush kerosene over the path to be cut. The cutting wheel starts a crack and the fluid fills it and reduces friction enabling the fracture to propagate freely in response to the pressure of the tool. It is certainly possible to do this without a cutting fluid, but in my experience the cut is far easier and likely to be clean. Glass is amorphous so has no preferred fracture direction and the cut is guided by the path of the cutting tool, or in the case of the video, by the scissors. I have to try this. Kerosene probably would be better than water because of its lower viscosity but stinks and of course has other drawbacks.

VJB - please report back! I'm sceptical, but it would b nice to be proved wrong.

Bob

Well, the almighty search god Google seems to think it can be done. http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/4523/

I did think, while watching the video that he cut those longer pieces awfully fast so, while starting the cut with scissors seems plausible, I would bet that the cut was finished by breaking along the cut line.

I have heard of this before; supposedly the water dampens the vibrations that would otherwise cause shattering.