X-ray spider
Genetologic Research 18/04/2008 23:04
A 53-million-year-old spider has been revealed in exquisite detail by scientists from the UK and Belgium. The spider Cenotextricella simoni is about 1mm in length (see scale-bar). The scientists say that it would have inhabited a wooded area and lived in a warm climate. Internal details can be seen in the view at bottom-right.
The ancient creepy-crawly had been trapped in amber and preserved in a lowland area around Paris, France. The scientists reconstructed the creature’s original appearance using an X-ray-based medical imaging technique. The pictures, published in the journal Zootaxa, “digitally dissect” the tiny spider to expose amazing details such as the preservation of internal organs.
“This is definitely the way forward for the study of amber fossils,” said David Penney, from Manchester University and lead author on the study.
“Amber provides a unique window into past forest ecosystems. It retains an incredible amount of information, not just about the spiders themselves, but also about the environment in which they lived.”
This is the first time that the medical imaging technique, known as Very High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography, has been used to investigate a fossil in amber - and Dr Penney said it had the potential to “revolutionise” the way fossils were studied.
Trompe-loeil
Genetologic Research 30/03/2008 22:35
Rancho La Brea, Los Angeles, 2008
Trompe-l’il is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three-dimensions, instead of actually being a two-dimensional painting.
photo: Maarten Vanden Eynde, 2008
Pere Borrell del Caso
Escaping Criticism, 1874
Platos Garbage Pile
Genetologic Research 26/03/2008 17:32
Tim Noble & Sue Webster
Real Life Is Rubbish, 2002
Tim Noble and Sue Webster. Partners in both life and art, Tim Noble (1966) and Sue Webster (1967) explore the toxic influences of consumer culture through new modes of portraiture. Turning garbage into complex and visually arresting sculptural installations, Noble and Webster exploit, manipulate and transform base materials, often using self-portraiture to undermine the celebrated authorship of the artist.
Dead White Trash (With Gulls), 1998, one of their earliest garbage pieces, is six months’ worth of peanut butter jars, soup cans, and other stuff from their kitchen rubbish can, plus a pair of dead seagulls. That it was the same six months it took to make the piece is more than a cute conceit. “As we were making it, we were eating and consuming,” says Noble. On the wall, the shadow figures of the artists take a break with a cigarette and a glass of wine. Real Life Is Rubbish, a recent work, is constructed from studio trash. “All our old tools,” explains Webster. “I was using a screwdriver, and it made my nose look great, so I used it. So we eventually ran out of tools.”
Dirty White Trash (With Gulls), 1998
Geological Graffiti
Genetologic Research 24/03/2008 20:19
This is an extreme closeup scan (2400 dpi) of a paint chip retrieved from the ruins of Belmont Art Park from a piture taken by Amy McKenzie earlier this year. The fragment is about 1cm thick, and appears to consist of about 150-200 layers of paint.
Egyptian Theatre, Los Angeles
The construction team currently restoring the 1922 Egyptian Theater, the American Cinematheque’s future home on Hollywood Boulevard, is engaged in a peculiar form of archeological excavation. Bound by federal laws dictating what renovations are permissible within a designated historic landmark and required to create a space suitable for contemporary media arts exhibitions, the workers peel back layers of piaster, paint and drywall. In the process they have revealed fragments of a 1960s-era mural, a hybrid of psychedelic and Egyptian styles, and, several layers beneath this, what remains of the original pastel and art deco ’20s decor. The excavation of successive false fronts and simulations suggests an architectural model for urban memory. Each layer reworks not a lost original but rather a prior approximation.
The Family Tree of Science
Genetologic Research 22/03/2008 20:52
A visualization showing the structure of scientific knowledge.
by Boonsri Dickinson
To show how information builds up and flows among scientific disciplines, Columbia University computer scientist W. Bradford Paley, along with colleagues Kevin Boyack and Dick Klavans, categorized about 800,000 scholarly papers into 776 areas of scientific study (shown as colored circular nodes) based on how often the papers were cited together by other papers. Paley then grouped those nodes by color under 23 broader areas of scientific inquiry, from mental health to fluid mechanics.
1 Social Scientists Dont Do Chemistry
The bigger a node is, the more papers it contains. Heavily cited papers appear in more than one node. Black lines connect any nodes that contain the same papers; the darker a link is, the more papers the connected nodes have in common. These links create the structure of the map and tend to pull similar scientific disciplines closer to one another.
2 Birds of a Feather
Paley refers to his map as a feather boathe feathers being gently waving strings of key words that uniquely define each nodes particular subject matter. In tiny type, the word string percutaneous tracheostomy, material review, autoimmune pancreatitis, and dialysis catheter, for example, swirls off a node in the infectious disease area. Unlike the carefully calculated placement of the nodes, the teams arrangement of the word strings on the page was left mostly to aesthetics.
3 The Road to Knowledge
The map doesnt show the road to breakthrough discoveries, but it can be used to determine which areas of science are most closely connected to one another, as well as which are the mostand leastintellectually vital and productive. Advances in mathematics are few. Medicine, on the other hand, dominates the lower half of the map.
4 No Science Is an Island
except maybe organic chemistry. One might assume that this bane of premed students is closely tied to medicine, but the map shows that the route from organic chemistry to health care requires more than one pit stop through fields like analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, biology, and even earth sciences. In fact, all of chemistry is a bit of an inside job. The links between the nodes of different chemistry disciplines are darker than other links because the disciplines tend to contain the same papers.
5 The Friendster Element
On the map, computer science is linked more closely to social sciences like psychology and sociology than to applied physics. If you trust it for a minute, it does make intuitive sense, Paley says. Social networks like Friendster depend heavily on software programs, while social scientists frequently rely on computers for statistical analysis.
source: Discover Magazine
The Tree of Science
from The Golden Encyclopedia, 1959
Carbon Circulation
Genetologic Research 21/03/2008 15:41
USDA Forest Service (FS) scientists have provided the first proof of concept for a method that allows researchers to study below-ground carbon allocation in trees without destroying them. In the latest issue of the journal Plant, Cell and Environment, Kurt Johnsen and fellow scientists at the FS Southern Research Station unit in Research Triangle Park, NC, describe a reversible, non-destructive chilling method that stops the movement of carbon into root systems.
The photosynthetic process of plants has been estimated to account for almost half of the carbon circulating in the Earth’s systems. Reliable data has been developed on carbon cycling in the above-ground processes of trees, but how much carbon is actually moved and stored below the ground has not yet been determined. Most methods to study below-ground processes involve destroying the roots as well as the mycorrhizal communities that live symbiotically with root systems.
Michael Sailstorfer
Waldputz (wood cleaning), 2000
Mark Dion
A meter of Jungle, 1992
Carbon Circulation
Genetologic Research 21/03/2008 15:41
USDA Forest Service (FS) scientists have provided the first proof of concept for a method that allows researchers to study below-ground carbon allocation in trees without destroying them. In the latest issue of the journal Plant, Cell and Environment, Kurt Johnsen and fellow scientists at the FS Southern Research Station unit in Research Triangle Park, NC, describe a reversible, non-destructive chilling method that stops the movement of carbon into root systems.
The photosynthetic process of plants has been estimated to account for almost half of the carbon circulating in the Earth’s systems. Reliable data has been developed on carbon cycling in the above-ground processes of trees, but how much carbon is actually moved and stored below the ground has not yet been determined. Most methods to study below-ground processes involve destroying the roots as well as the mycorrhizal communities that live symbiotically with root systems.
Michael Sailstorfer
Waldputz (wood cleaning), 2000
Mark Dion
A meter of Jungle, 1992
Dendrochronology
Genetologic Research 18/03/2008 22:32
Dendrochronology or tree-ring dating is the method of scientific dating based on the analysis of tree-ring growth patterns. This technique was invented and developed during the 20th century originally by the astronomer A. E. Douglass, the founder of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona.
Other branches of Dendrology:
dendroarchaeology: The science that uses tree rings to date when timber was felled, transported, processed, or used for construction or wooden artifacts. Example: dating the tree rings of a beam from a ruin in the American Southwest to determine when it was built.
dendroclimatology: The science that uses tree rings to study present climate and reconstruct past climate. Example: analyzing ring widths of trees to determine how much rainfall fell per year long before weather records were kept.
dendroecology: The science that uses tree rings to study factors that affect the earth’s ecosystems. Example: analyzing the effects of air pollution on tree growth by studying changes in ring widths over time.
dendrogeomorphology: The science that uses tree rings to date earth surface processes that created, altered, or shaped the landscape. Example: analyzing changes in tree growth patterns via tree rings to date a series of landslide events.
dendroglaciology: The science that uses tree rings to date and study past and present changes in glaciers. Example: dating the inside rings of trees on moraines to establish the approximate date of a glacial advance.
dendrohydrology: The science that uses tree rings to study changes in river flow, surface runoff, and lake levels. Example: dating when trees were inundated to determine the sequence of lake level changes over time.
dendropyrochronology: The science that uses tree rings to date and study past and present changes in wildfires. Example: dating the fire scars left in tree rings to determine how often fires occurred in the past.
dendroentomology: The science that uses tree rings to date and study the past dynamics of insect populations. Example: dating the growth suppressions left in tree rings from western spruce budworm outbreaks in the past.
Helgi Hjaltalins Ejolfsdorfs
Dig down Dig up, 2004
Made for the Sculpture Quadrennial Riga 2004 European Space
Genetologic Research
Genetologic Research 12/03/2008 12:22
Cornelia Parker
Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991
Cold Dark Matter began life as a garden shed filled with objects from her own and friends sheds and things bought at a car boot sale. She then asked the army to blow up the shed under very controlled conditions. The objects, along with the fragments of the shed, were collected and suspended in a closed room in an attempt to recreate the moment just after the explosion. The installation is lit with a single light-bulb at the very centre of the arrangement, casting shadows on the walls. The title gives us a whole new way of understanding the artwork, making us think of other dramatic moments of destruction and creation in the much wider universe.
Neither From Nor Towards, 1992
In ‘Neither From Nor Towards’ the brick remnants of an eroded house hang suspended in stilled animation in the work of British artist Cornelia Parker, who was nominated for the Turner prize in 1997. Her work often depicts a moment in time, which has been halted. In ‘Neither From Nor Towards’, the bricks are resonant with their previous life, reminding us of the passage of time over which we have no control. Parker rescues and reinterprets the ordinary, which is transformed by the gallery setting into something poetic and extraordinary.
Heart of Darkness, 2004
Charcoal from a Florida Wildfire (planned forest burn that got out of control)
Cornelia Parker was born in Cheshire in I956 and lives and works in London. She is interested in how everyday objects can be changed by (often violent) processes. During her career she has used a steamroller to flatten silver plates and has transformed a wedding ring into metres of fine, gold thread. Although at first glance it might seem that she is interested in destroying objects, she is in fact fascinated by how change can create something completely new.
Genetologic Research
Genetologic Research 11/03/2008 21:38
Tony Cragg
Stack, 1975
Many of Cragg’s early works are made from found materials and discarded construction materials and disposed household materials. This gave him a large range of mainly man-made materials and automatically provided him with the thematic concerns that became characteristic of his work up to the present. During the 1970s he made sculptures using simple making techniques like stacking, splitting and crushing. In 1978 he collected discarded plastic fragments and arranged them into colour categories. The first work of this kind was called ‘New Stones-Newtons Tones’. Shortly after this he made works on the floor and wall reliefs which created images. One of these works , Britain Seen From the North (1981), features the shape of the island of Great Britain on the wall, oriented so that north is to the left. To the left of the island is the figure of a man, apparently Cragg himself, looking at the country from the position of an outsider.
Britain Seen From the North, 1981
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