Technical Tats

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." - Albert Einstein

Click the photo to check out tattoos featured in the New York Times.

"Science Ink," recently published by Carl Zimmer is a collection of the science inspired art that experts and novices alike have affixed to their bodies.

Having considered such a tattoo myself (perhaps with an insect theme?) I was really drawn to the colorful images I found among various periodicals and on Zimmer's own blog (see photo links and links below).

What I liked most, however, was what some of the people had to say about the inspiration for their body art. Though many explanations involved frustrating graduate school stories, many tattoos (like the DNA Monster, Preserving a Moth, or Calvin and the Cosmos) in combination with their stories describe the connection with science that I've struggled to articulate in past posts.

Click the photo to check out tattoos featured in Popular Science

Tattoos of Darwin's finches (above) and early mechanical planetarium designs (right) demonstrate not only the kind of art that Science can inspire, but the beauty that already exists within science, like the illusion of destiny in the theory of natural selection and the geometrical precision that accompanies technical drawings.
But they also exemplify the necessity for art in scientific pursuits. After all, where would evolution be if Darwin couldn't draw?

Don't feel like buying his book?
Check out Carl Zimmer's "Science Tattoo Emporium" on his blog "The Loom."

For my artistic sister, who does, and my many other friends, who do not share my love of hard science.

Dear Russia, Thanks for reading.

So, I've been monitoring my blog stats and apparently about half of my consistent readers are Russian. 

In the vacuum of my own community it's been easy to forget the potentially global reach of my rather local little project. It's strange to think that there are people on the other side of the world who might be interested in my blog (or maybe who just happen to stumble upon it).

Anyway, thanks Russian readers. This past month you've outnumbered my American friends. Privet!
 

Check out your own stats and post anything interesting you find as a comment on this post. If we can get enough info I'll follow it up with another post.

In general you should be able to reach the "Stats" tab from the same page where you edit your posts. Along the top of the page, right under the title of your blog, there should be different tabs. The last one on the right should say "Stats.

or

You can also click a link to view those statistics directly from your dashboard. From there you should be able to see your profile and a list of the blogs you edit. Underneath the title of your blog is a BIG BLUE button (orange in updated view) that says "New Post" but there are also buttons like "Design" and, wait for it... "Stats!!!" (If you have the updated blogger interface then instead of tabs you have a notebook icon with a drop-down menu.)

When predicting the end of the world gets you a prize in mathematics

This past September's Ig Nobel Prize winners included not one, but six people who believed they knew when the end was coming. Sadly, though perhaps not surprisingly, four of the six were fellow US citizens, among them Harold Camping, who recently corrected his original prediction, September 6th 1994 to October 21st 2011. Nice try Harry.

On the 29th, he and fellow fortune tellers were recognized with an Ig for "teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations." But what do you expect from a ceremony that keeps speeches appropriately lengthed by employing an 8-year-old girl, uses a human spotlight, and begins with a sword swallowing demonstration?

Not everything about the Igs is all fun and games, however. The qualifications for nominations are that a nominees research be first, humorous, but secondly, thought provoking. So, while certain awards lean more toward the laughable end of the spectrum, there are yet others that provoke a more ponderance than laughter.

Past nominees have included Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris who won the Psychology Prize in 2004 for demonstrating one way in which selective attention influences memory using a gorilla suit and a video. See if you can count the passes that players in white shirts make or figure out how this card trick is done. Simons's and Chabris's research, in addition to winning them an Ig, is now featured in many psychology text books.

 Check out the ceremony, or parts of it, on youtube:

Other notable winners this year:

Arturas Zuokas - Peace Prize for preventing illegal parking with tanks.

Darryl Gwynne and David Rentz - Biology Prize for "discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer bottle."

Makoto Imai, Naoki Urushihata, Hideki Tanemura, Yukinobu Tajima, Hideaki Goto, Koichiro Mizoguchi and Junichi Murakami - Chemistry Prize "for determining the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish) to awaken sleeping people in case of a fire or other emergency, and for applying this knowledge to invent the wasabi alarm."

check out the full list of winners.

A recent article in Nature titled "Tooth Chemistry Reveals Sauropod Sojourns," describes the research of Henry Fircke and colleagues, who have found evidence that dinosaurs like Apatasaurus followed migratory patterns.

A few sauropod species scaled in relation to a human being.

Erectus vs. Sapien

Homo erectus skull cast.

With the obvious exception of members of certain religious groups, I think we can all agree that homo erectus and homo sapien (that'd be us) are related. But where are we in relation to homo erectus on the  wonderful family tree of human evolution? Are we great-great-great-grand babies? Cousins? Second-cousins three times removed? Fifth-cousin's abusive ex-husband's son-in-laws?

To get an idea of how difficult that is to figure out, let's think about that whole family tree thing literally. Imagine that tree has been broken up, scattered about, worn away, and buried in the ground for about 7 million years and now it's your job to put the pieces back together. Not so easy.

In fact, when Eugene Dubois discovered the first fossil of homo erectus in 1891, nicknamed Java Man, there was some controversy over whether or not it was even part of the same genus (homo, that is). Though there is still some debate over what fossils fall under the erectus species, it is now considered to be among the widest spread and longest lived species (see the long red stripe in the photo below). That's a lot of success for an extinct animal.

 

Click on the photo to check out this interactive timeline on the Smithsonian website. Red bars indicate different homo species and the time in which they lived.

How they are related to modern humans remains unclear. While some argue that homo erectus should be lumped in with our ancestors homo ergaster, others think that the species was part of an entirely different and now extinct branch.



A few extra notes on evolution:

We did NOT evolve from monekys!
On a weekly basis I have the privilege of listening to parents tell their children that they evolved from chimpanzees. This is NOT TRUE. While I strongly encourage parents to talk to their children about things like this (kids are smart and curious), if you would like to explain evolution try, "we evolved from animals that looked like monkeys," or "people and monkey's have the same great great great grandparents." Please! don't simplify a concept for your child (or unaware friend) using blatantly false information. You will just confuse them.


We also did NOT evolve from neanderthals. 
If that surprises you, I sympathize.  Neanderthals and modern humans are both part of the genus homo and share an ancestor, homo ergaster. However, that branch of the human family died off with the neanderthal. 

If you are still curious about human ancestry check out "How did humans develop?" in Popular Science. Though a little lengthy, this article provides a readable description of some crucial fossil findings and describes some traditional and modern analysis techniques. On page 3 it provides some background information regarding the initial controversy that surrounded the discovery of the first homo erectus fossil by Eugene Dubois.