A cross-section image showing debris (or “splash”) of particles entering the detector when the LHC beam was steered into the collimator (tungsten block) at around 9:50am, September 10. (Credit: CMS Collaboration )
In 1992, the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School began a massive, international effort under the direction of Nobel Peace Prize-winning scientist and author Eric Chivian to catalog “what was known about how other species contribute to human health.” The result is “Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity,” a 568-page tomb of scientific research recounting the numerous medical advances acquired through our study of other species. This Friday at the Museum of Science, Chivian will have a public discussion about biodiversity and health with world-renowned research scientist Edward O. Wilson. Moderating the event will be Noel Michele “Missy” Holbrook, the Charles Bullard Professor of Forestry and Professor of Biology at Harvard University, who shared some of her thoughts on the book with Science Metropolis.
Q: WHAT QUESTIONS DO YOU WANT TO ADDRESS AS MODERATOR?
A: As moderator I will try to put voice to questions that the audience will have. One of the reasons I have adopted the book for my course is that it has so many examples of how the pursuit of knowledge can change the way we act in the world. I think that’s what both Drs. Wilson and Chivian have come to symbolize in their lifes’ work – helping people see these connections and then take the next steps. I’m going to try to provoke them to really elaborate on those themes in their own experiences with biological diversity and value.
Q: WHAT ACTIONS ARE THESE SCIENTISTS TAKING ON THIS ISSUE ASIDE FROM PUBLISHING BOOKS?
A: I think both Drs. Wilson and Chivianc do a large amount of going beyond the ivory tower, whether going to world leaders and decision makers at every level. Both have been very active in the last year reaching out to the religious right with a shared interest in biological diversity. Both are very involved in helping to recognize we have a common reason for preserving biodiversity.
Q: WHAT IS DR. CHIVIAN’S ROLE IN THIS RESEARCH?
A: He carries a great deal of respect in part becase he’s able to effectively communicate the value of biological diversity in ways that matter. We invite him to give a guest lecture to my intro course each year in part because he resonates with students. I think it’s partly that he’s a strong voice from within the medical community that he really stands out and does a great service for the general public.
Q. WHAT DO YOUR STUDENTS THINK OF THE BOOK?
A: They have not read it yet, so it is very hard fro me to comment on that. It is a handsome and affordable book with lovely illustrations and a very fine layout. The goal was to get it into the hands of a wide audience, including students. I think knowledge is empowering and I think this is a good question: What is the value of biological diversity? I like the title because we depend on the health of our planet, food system, and ourselves - all of these things are intertwined.
Q: YOU STUDY PLANT BIOLOGY. ARE THERE ANY EXAMPLES OF PLANTS AFFECTING HUMAN HEALTH?
A: There are quite a few examples. Plants are the great biochemists of our planet. The cure for malaria came from a tree. Aspirin was originally isolated from the bark of a willow tree. A lot of cancer drugs also come from plants.
Q: WHAT DO YOU WANT THE AUDIENCE TO TAKE AWAY FROM FRIDAY’S EVENT?
A: We’re at a very serious juncture at the history of Earth for a potential large amount of biological diversity to go extinct. Quite a serious topic, so I hope people come away thinking there is hope, they can work in partnership with academics, and that it’s a shared endeavour that matters to them.
How to Get Tickets: Tickets for this program may be purchased by phone at 617/723-2500 or online at www.mos.org/adults. Seating is limited. Advance purchase is strongly recommended.
A new exhibit on “The Language of Color” will run through September 2009 at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. (Credit: Adam Blanchette, www.hmnh.harvard.edu)
A new exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge features “The Language of Color.” It answers three big questions: How is color used? How is it perceived? And how is color made?
Posted by Joseph, under video |
Date: September 26, 2008 1 Comment »
The meteor hurtled through space, warming and breaking apart as it approached the yellow star. One small piece, compelled by gravity, landed in the warm, shallow waters of a planet orbiting the star. The tiny bacterium, frozen into a cryogenic stasis during the long journey through the void, woke up and found itself in an environment well-suited to growth, after some changes…
Spore is a video game that chronicles the journey of life from a single-celled organism, to a land dweller, and on to various stages of intelligent civilization. This summary does not do justice to what it is, however, the most complex and complete simulation game ever made. After swimming about in the ocean as an omnivore and growing steadily, I made my way onto the land looking something like this:
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This was ill-suited for life on land so I decided to change things up a bit, ending up more like this:
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As this creature, rather randomly called a “Brotox,” for no reason other than I liked the sound, I wandered about the continent, running into other creatures I either befriended with my persuasive songs and dances, or hunted to extinction. By doing so, and by finding convenient bone piles scattered about, I was able to discover new kinds of body parts and evolve into a much more fearsome creature, at least to the planet’s other inhabitants. To my own eyes, I looked a bit silly, but evolution does sometimes lead down unlikely paths. By the time I reached sentience, I looked like this:
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My species began building huts, going to war with other tribes and forming alliances, very quickly building a technological civilization focused on trade. Through judicious alliances and the occasional war, the Brotox empire set for space to terraform planets, making friends (and enemies) with other space-faring empires.
Now, Science Metropolis is a web site for science and science-related material, which begs the question of why a brief review of a video game, no matter how fun and (very) addictive it is? Well, a game like Spore does do good for the cause of science education, with one unfortunate side effect. Most importanty, Spore makes evolutionary biology understandable and interesting to the player. When a creature gains an “adaptaption,” it makes sense why it is beneficial. The only flaw is that it also makes evolution appear to be a simple progression. Evolutionary reality is intrincically subtle and lacks any sort of intelligent intervention, which is after all, exactly what a player is.
Still, Spore is a lot of fun, and that is what matters in a video game. Just take any “science” in it with a grain of salt. It bodes well for the future of this type of game as makes an effort to go according to actual biology. Who knows how the genre will continue to evolve….
Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No- actually, it is a bird.
Street pigeons- also known as Columbia livia, rock doves, or, to quote Woody Allen, “flying rats”- are a common sight on the streets of Boston. Most city-dwellers ignore them, many revile them, and a few feed them. In the portrait of the urban landscape, they are mere background objects, neither endangered nor exotic enough to inspire our interest, let alone lavish PBS documentaries. Pigeons, it seems, just don’t seem natural.
Courtney Humphries, a graduate of the science writing program at MIT, brings these birds into the foreground in her book, Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan… and the World. The author recently gave a talk at the Harvard Natural History Museum, where she gave a brief overview of the historical relationship between people and pigeons. Though they’ve gotten a bad rap as disease-carriers (untrue) and annoying pests (somewhat true), the pigeon is an amazing evolutionary success story.
Humphries pointed out that the first chapter of The Origin of Species focuses on the variation observed in domestic pigeons. Darwin himself owned specimens from several breeds of fancy pigeon, from the peacock-like Fantail to the Jacobin, which sports a large, feathery frill around its head. By breeding his pets and extensively questioning pigeon enthusiasts (of which there were many in Victorian England), he was able to fully flesh out his ideas on descent from a common ancestor. While even the most casual of science hobbyists has heard of Darwin’s finches, it is really Darwin’s pigeons that we should thank for the theory of evolution.
From its beginnings, the history of the pigeon was heavily influenced by mankind. After being domesticated in ancient Egypt, some of the birds naturally escaped their owners. However, unlike other feral animals, they never actually left. Buildings erected by men provided a habitat as equally suited to them as the rocky cliffs where their wild cousins nested. Food was plentiful and there were few natural predators. Thanks to the efforts of people, feral pigeons flourished in the cities.
“These birds are very successful because of us, and what we’ve done… we created them,” Humphries said.
While pigeons are not the subject of many scientific studies, people still find them to be useful creatures. Pigeon are still a food source across the world, especially in Asia. Homing pigeons have carried messages as recently as World War I. Superdove even relates the account of how the behaviorist B.F. Skinner developed a prototype for a pigeon-guided missile.
During the question and answer session, an audience member asked if Humphries had ever thought of eating the subject of her research. She laughed, and confirmed that she had ordered pigeon at a French restaurant, where it is euphemistically listed on the menu as “squab”. She called it “a richly flavored bird- not fatty like duck, and not bland like chicken.”
Yes, she recommends the pigeon- in more ways than one.
(For the more adventurous readers of Science Metropolis, Clio Restaurant in Back Bay offers pigeon accompanied by black truffles, spaghetti squash, pistachio croquant and baby leeks, for a cool $38.)
Growing up in Massachusetts, I went to the Museum of Science on countless school trips and family outings. Once, I even went for an extra-special sleepover party; an amazing experience, except that my group (boys and girls around fifth grade) was assigned to sleep in the “How Your Life Began” exhibit. If you can imagine the life-changing experience of having a giant pillow fight with your elementary school classmates while surrounded by videos of women giving birth and models of the male and female reproductive systems, then you can get an idea of the unique experiences the museum has to offer.
Last Monday night, the Museum of Science hosted their 12th annual College Night. All college students received free admission as well as two free tickets to special exhibits, such as IMAX shows, laser light shows, and even Duck Tours. I chose tickets to the Butterfly Garden and the Led Zeppelin laser light show.
I stopped by the Butterfly Garden first and spent some time observing and photographing the many colorful species of butterflies and moths inhabiting the humid, plant-filled space. Groups of students huddled together, excitedly pointing out butterflies hidden among the plants. One girl shrieked and covered her head as a low-flying butterfly came a bit too close for comfort. Christina Lau, a Boston University sophomore majoring in English, thought that it was “so pretty and relaxing.” Her classmate Lisa Merolla, a junior journalism major, said that it was smaller than she had pictured, but “it was still cool.” The garden is a must-see if you visit the museum. It’s a shame that it costs an extra $4.50 on top of the admission price, but it’s really worth it. Be sure to check yourself in the mirror for stowaway butterflies before you exit the room!
Next, I wandered around the exhibit halls. From dinosaurs to electricity to optical illusions, you can find a little bit of everything at the museum. As the night went on, increasing numbers of students crowded the halls and enthusiastically played with the hands-on exhibits. There was no sense of embarrassment or “I can’t believe I’m at this lame event” anywhere. Everyone in sight was laughing and smiling. One group of girls yelled out “I love science!” in unison while riding the escalator. “This is, like, the best night ever!” exclaimed another girl who was waiting in line for a laser show.
After looking at some exhibits, I stopped by a live animal presentation where a museum educator, Chelsea, was showing off a beautiful Brazilian Rainbow Boa. The audience listened to the presentation attentively and without a hint of rudeness. I wonder if they all listen to their professors as closely.
On my way to the Charles Hayden Planetarium for the laser show, I walked through the lobby, where KISS108 DJs were providing music, free candy, and prizes. I won a gym bag just for finding a coin from 1992. When I reached the planetarium, the line was already beginning to snake through the neighboring exhibit. Although not everyone decided to stay through the entire laser show, which featured a lively 11-song Led Zeppelin set, most agreed that it was “trippy” and “awesome.” Other laser shows featuring different music were also available.
Next, I took a quick ice cream break, enjoying some mint chocolate Dippin’ Dots in the atrium by the musical stairs. If you have a headache, I would not recommend hanging out in this part of the museum. A chime sounds with every step that someone takes on this staircase. You can expect quite the cacophonic symphony on a busy day.
Other fun events of the night included a Rock Band Xbox tournament, bug and shark shows in the 3D cinema, and three different IMAX films in the Mugar Omni Theater. Walker Jenkins, a freshman at Northeastern, viewed the Wild Ocean IMAX film, which he thought was “really cool.” Christina Lau and Lisa Merolla also watched it. “It was really intense, especially seeing it on a gigantic dome screen,” said Lau.
Everyone seemed to have a great time, and most said that they’d return in the future, but it’s unfortunate that the regular admission price is $19, pretty steep for the average college student’s budget. But a free night of fun is irresistible, and the large crowds of happy students were evidence that the 12th annual College Night was a big hit. “It’s fun to act like a kid again with your friends, and to be able to do it for free is even better,” explained Merolla.
From science majors to English majors to those who have yet to decide, the Museum of Science has something to offer everyone. Because everyone’s a science dork at heart.
Thermal Infrared image of flying Brazilian free-tailed bats in Texas. Key to false colors: yellow (warmest), red (warm), green (cool), blue (coolest). (Credit: Thomas H. Kunz and Margrit Betke/Boston University)
Finding out if wind turbines kill bats requires more than a body count. To answer this seemingly simple question, scientists need to find out how bats migrate, why they migrate, how they fly, and what air currents they follow. The complexity and inaccessibility of aerial lifestyles often means that flying creatures, like bats, are poorly understood.
That is why Thomas Kunz, Director of the Center for Ecology and Conservation Biology at Boston University, proposed a new discipline called aeroecology at the “Integrative and Comparative Biology Symposium” in August. Aeroecology is the study of the interactions of organisms in and with the air. It’s difficult to think of the air as a habitat. But to a flying animal, the air is a landscape as complex as the ground below, filled with turbulence, currents, predators, prey, and even diseases. The study of aeroecology encompasses both the structure of the air and the organisms that migrate and feed within it. Or, as Kunz puts it: “Everything above the ground is fair game.”
Aeroecology is based at Boston University, but it draws on research from scientists all over the country, working in fields as disparate as atmospheric science, engineering, and computer science. Guided by aeroecology’s cross-disciplinary approach, biologists used to working from the ground are beginning to use common devices to observe animals in flight. For example, Doppler weather-surveillance radar can distinguish birds and bats from each other based on their flight speed. Other researchers are using tracking radar to identify and record movements of migratory animals. Thermal imaging cameras-which can capture the temperature profiles of warm-bodied animals that would otherwise be invisible at night-allow researchers to census populations of the nocturnal Brazilian free-tailed bat.
When using large-scale detection instruments, such as Doppler radar, it is impossible to identify species. One way to do this, Kunz says, is to learn exactly what the wing beats of each species look like. Kunz and his colleagues plan to learn this by sending different species of bats and birds into the sky in a small container attached to a weather balloon. When it reaches the target altitude, the container will open and the animal will fly out. This will allow Kunz to record the wing beat patterns of each species in its natural aerial environment. Kunz says that such research will help identify birds and bats in the air, especially at night.
Climate change and human expansion make understanding the fauna of the aerosphere more important than ever before. Thousands of bats and birds die each year from wind turbines, and these aren’t the only hazard that winged animals face. “The air space has been greatly altered by anthropogenic development-turbines, aircraft, lighted cities, skyscrapers,” Kunz says. “I am against further development before we know the potential consequences in each situation.” The unified approach that aeroecology advocates, Kunz says, will be vital to preserving the unfamiliar and dynamic world that exists above us.
UK-based science magazine New Scientist stepped off the newsstands this afternoon and came to Cambridge’s Technology Square for a party. In a grassy courtyard surrounded by leading research institutions, locals sampled free drinks and food before heading over to a nearby Wii competition.
Although the Block Party was for advertising purposes only, (I am now the proud owner of Pfizer chapstick), New Scientist couldn’t help infusing some geekiness into their event. Dozens entered a science trivia contest to win prizes like a copy of “Why Don’t Penguin’s Feet Freeze,” a 1.5 G flash drive or an iPod shuffle. Questions on the closest platypus relative, deep-sea vents, and nuclear reactors kept the competition fierce. (It is no surprise, however, that Team ScienceMetropolis.com won the science in Massachusetts round.)
Those who haven’t heard of New Scientist should definitely pick up an issue. It is a weekly publication that covers the latest world news in science, space, technology and the environemnt. Their feature stories are often evocative and timely. Some of the latest include where to find black holes, the psychology of leadership and racing rockets. And unlike the more stuffy science publications, they are a strong supporter of fun.
Installation view of “Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future.” (Credit: John Kennard/ICABoston)
– by Natalia Mackenzie
The giant elevator in Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art opened and I faced the 16-inch long, S-shaped wall mirror that introduced me to the Anish Kapoor experience. The image of myself that Kapoor offered as I entered the exhibition struck me: Short legs, short torso and one big head. I found my body’s boundaries and shapes now unfamiliar, and I guess, neither were those of the other visitors, who stared at their deformed images next to me. Without realizing it, Kapoor was slowly immersing us into his ludic environment of unfamiliar spaces.
Born in 1954 to an Iraqi-Jewish mother and a Hindu father, Kapoor is a mixture of both Western and Eastern cultures. He explores what he believes is the seduction of distorting familiar spaces and invites the viewer to be part of the art scene. With a total of 14 sculptures, the exhibition “Anish Kapoor: Past, Present, Future” gave me a perfect glimpse of the twisted world Kapoor builds over his art pieces.
As I walked through the room, passing in front of thousands of tiny, hexagonal mirrors resembling a fly eye, a huge, red, waxed planet caught my attention. It was smashed against the wall as if the artist felt that there was not enough space in the room to fit it all. More that just playing with speculations about where the space begins and where it ends, Kapoor believes space can be an object by itself.
Looking from a distance, his piece My Body, Your Body, a dark blue rectangle of 6-feet tall and 3-feet long, appeared as a simple flat piece hanging on the wall. But as one gets closer, the blue plane becomes a hollowed, deep structure. The effect is so unbelievable that the guards had a hard time keeping everybody away from sticking their hands into the piece. But that was not all. Once my perception was stable enough, an inner cavity in the center of the rectangle became evident. Suddenly, I felt like I was diving into a blue body through an endoscope, and had made it halfway down to some kind of cave. My feeling made total sense when considering that Kapoor is obsessed with cavities and protrusions that evoke our own mysterious body parts.
And when I was dizzy enough and thought that I had seen it all, I came across one of that exhibit’s most disturbing illusions. As if showing off Kapoor’s need of understanding creation, When I Am Pregnant, made in 1992 with fiberglass and paint, emerged from the white flat wall. Easily unnoticed when standing in front of it, the round, pregnant, belly-like structure that protrudes from the wall, strikes you with its perfect silhouette.
Kapoor’s simple, hidden shapes easily provoked and unleashed my curiosity. I hoped one day I could come across one of those giant reflecting structures that distorted the image of the Rockefeller center or the Chicago Skyline. I left the museum thinking it is no wonder that Kapoor won the prestigious Turner Prize and is considered one of the world’s most influential sculptors. I think Nicholas Baume, chief curator of the ICA summarizes best my opinion of the exhibition in his quote: “Kapoor’s work demands to be experienced.”
With waxen wings, young Icarus took off from the island of Crete and into the sky. Charged by the feeling of flight, he ignored his father’s warnings and soared higher and higher towards the stars. Flapping hard, Icarus soon flew so near to the sun that his wings melted. As he crashed into the water below, he became another tragic figure in Greek mythology.
This story always troubled scientist Brian Greene. “Here is a young boy who goes against what his father says and pays the ultimate penalty,” he told a crowd gathered at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square Tuesday night. For Greene, this moral is completely antithetical to scientific investigation, which is about challenging the established order.
There is a bit of Icarus in Greene as well. The Columbia University professor and well-known string theorist is a maverick in the particle physics community for his desire to bring the mathematics of time and space to mass audiences. He has authored two popular science books, “The Fabric of the Cosmos” and “The Elegant Universe,” which later became a PBS documentary starring Greene. At his Tuesday-night talk, sponsored by Harvard Book Store, Greene promoted his latest and riskiest work, “Icarus at the Edge of Time,” a graphic-heavy, fictional science story aimed at both adults and children.
Greene’s version of the Icarus tale is a futurist vision that rewards curiosity, one that he calls “much closer to the experience of science.” The reader is introduced to Icarus, a young astronaut born on a spaceship, on route to an alien planet he will never see. The entirety of his life is to be spent traveling and he passes the days learning about space and life on Earth. Along the journey, his ship passes a nearby black hole, and Icarus is overcome by the desire to go to its edge. Although his father warns him against it, Icarus eventually feeds his curiosity. The outcome is both tragic and satisfying, an excellent metaphor for scientific investigation.
The book contains a considerable amount of scientific fact about black holes, but the storytelling element drives the reader along. “For so many people, science is the material that sits between the two covers of a textbook,” Greene says. He calls this a shame, “because science is one of the most wonderful adventure stories.” This is a true and fascinating statement, especially since it is is made by a string theorist. The power of Greek mythology to teach a lesson is much greater than a detail-laden science lesson. In this respect, “Icarus at the Edge of Time,” is an unconventional textbook, one that should be read by physics students from elementary age to graduate school.
A cross-section image showing debris (or “splash”) of particles entering the detector when the LHC beam was steered into the collimator (tungsten block) at around 9:50am, September 10. (Credit: CMS Collaboration ) 
