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It’s been a long and undoubtedly strange journey for Galileo Galilei’s various body parts. Some of you will recall that when his body was reinterred in 1737, his middle finger was removed, along with several other body parts. The finger and a vertebra have been stored (and displayed) in museums in Florence and Padua.
However, after passing through various collections for several hundred years, a tooth, a thumb, and another finger “went missing” in 1905. It was just recently that they were identified:
“His lost fingers and tooth were bought by an unnamed collector at a recent auction, where they were being sold as unidentified artifacts contained in an 17th century wooden case…”
So will these appendages now be reunited with the rest of his corpse in the tomb in Florence? Well, not exactly. It seems they will “be exhibited from early 2010, when [Florence's History of Science] museum will re-open after current renovation work and will change its name to the Galileo museum.”
Those who find this entire business a bit bizarre are invited to also read or listen to NPR’s report about “The Twisted Journey of Napoleon’s Privates.”
What you smell may be a marker for their slow death. After noticing that professional conservators smelled paper while doing their assessments, researchers from University College London’s Centre for Sustainable Heritage used gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify and quantify the substances released by old books.
Their report in the journal Analytical Chemistry identified acetic acid, furfural, and lipid peroxidation products in various proportions depending on the types of paper, binding and inks used, and they suggest that a “sniff test” may be useful to identify books in need of the attention of a conservator.
And how does one describe the smell of old books to a non-chemist? The next time you attend a wine tasting, deftly switch the conversation to books and tell your friends that what you love is…
“…a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.”
Pedro M. Cruz, a graduate student in information visualization and interaction design, created this time-elapsed representation of the rise and decline of the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish overseas empires from 1800 to 2000. He writes:
The data refers to the evolution of the top 4 maritime empires of the XIX and XX centuries by extent. I chose the maritime empires because of their more abrupt and obtuse evolution as the visual emphasis is on their decline. The first idea to represent a territory independence was a mitosis like split — it’s harder to implement than it looks. Each shape tends to retain an area that’s directly proportional to the extent of the occupied territory on a specific year. The datasource is mostly our beloved wikipedia. The split of a territory is often the result of an extent process and it had to be visualized on a specific year. So I chose to pick the dates where it was perceived a de facto independence (e.g. the most of independence declarations prior to the new state’s recognition). Dominions of an empire, were considered part of that empire and thus not independent.
Charlie Sorrel has an article at Wired exploring the potential development of LED-lit tattoos. New chips are small enough to be placed under the skin, mounted on a sheet of silk that dissolves into the body:
New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course). Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen.
The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice — about 1 millimeter, and just 250 nanometers thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added.
These displays could be hooked up to any kind of electronic device, also inside the body. Medical uses are being explored, from blood-sugar sensors that show their readouts on the skin itself to neurodevices that tie into the body’s nervous system — hooking chips to particular nerves to control a prosthetic hand, for example.
Chips are already used inside bodies, most notably the tiny RFID tags injected into pets. But the flexible nature of these “tattooed” circuits means they can move elastically with the body, sitting in places that a rigid circuit board couldn’t.
The electronics company Philips is developing the idea, and you can see a concept video of their work at the link.
Link | Image: flickr user spacemanbobby
Conductor/composer Andre Rieu showcases Il Silenzio (commonly known as a variation of Taps) with trumpet solo by 13 year old Melissa Venema. The song is much more beautiful when played in its entirety, as opposed to what we hear in movie funeral scenes. This is probably the most peaceful five minutes you’ll have all day.
Il Silenzio from Brandon Noonan on Vimeo.
This is a functional mug made out of woven strips of bacon, filled with melted cheese.
I have not yet been able to find the name of the genius responsible for this holy creation. Will s/he step forward and claim the appropriate adulation?
Link via Geekologie
Strong emphasis on the word “early.” A research team at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada was able to temporarily stun worms with an ultraviolet light:
The animals that scientists experimented with — pinhead-sized worms known as nematodes — stayed paralyzed even when the light was turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the paralysis wore off
The researchers fed a light-sensitive material — a “photoswitch” known as dithienylethene — to the transparent worms. When exposed to ultraviolet rays, the molecule turned blue and the worms became paralyzed. Using visible light instead made the chemical turn colorless and the paralysis ended [...]
Branda wanted to make clear that this photoswitch would likely not have the same effect on humans. “You’d have to have a huge amount of it,” he explained. “If you did, you might see the activity of cells shut down, which would eventually kill them. Paralysis is just an intermediate step to death in many cases.”
Video at the link.
Link via Discover | Image: Paramount Pictures
In a new comic, cartoonist Patrick Moberg compares various web 2.0 social networking tools to intoxicating drugs, including tumblr, twitter, vimeo, and myspace. But don’t think that he holds these utilities in low regard. Moberg once used them and more to locate a girl that he saw on a NYC subway.
Link via Urlesque | Image: Patrick Moberg
Photo: Gentle Giant Studios
The Star Wars cantina bookend set is currently out of stock, and at a cost of over $150.00 it’s definitely for those with money to burn. Neatorama sells cool bookends for far less. However, this and other examples including Lord of the Rings, Batman vs. Superman, Harry Potter and more can be ogled at Uphaa.
Remember the Dramatic Chipmunk Internet meme? Well, I don’t know what took so long, but the chipmunk (or prairie dog if you want to be technical about it) has made a come back of sorts.
Behold the Dramatic Chipmunk Messenger Bag, made from thick faux canvas, with adjustable nylon strap. From the Neatorama Shop: Link (At a distinctly non-dramatic price of $11.95!)
Some things are so obvious, it only took a quarter-century for someone to think of this. (via b3ta)
This 1936 ad for Camel cigarettes encourages you to stop and smoke between each course of your Thanksgiving feast. Link to Flickr page (full size). -via Metafilter
Can’t decide what kind of pie to serve after Thanksgiving dinner? Make them all in one pie pan! Cakespy at Serious Eats experimented with pecan, apple, and pumpkin pie recipes to make this triple threat. The best results came from the pie divided into sections, as seen in the picture. The recipes are included. Link -via Unique Daily
Relive the past 9.8 years in news stories condensed into seven minutes, peppered with snark and wit. via AcidCow.
Maité Roël of Bovekerke, Belgium is the youngest victim of the first World War. As a disabled war victim, she carries a veteran’s card that entitles her to reduced train fares, but gets suspicious looks when she uses it. Roël was only nine years old when an RAF bomb that was inadvertently thrown on a bonfire nearly destroyed her leg. She underwent 29 operations and was addicted to morphine for ten years.
“We went on a scout camping expedition to Wetteren and I remember now that it was an old military camp,” Maité recalls very slowly. She has tiny dreadlocks that hang down her slim face and a silver ring in her nose – not the usual face of a First World War victim. “It was July 6th, 1992. I knew nothing about war. I remember we all built a fire using bricks round the outside and the other kids starting throwing logs on it. I was tired and so I went a few metres from the fire so I could sleep. Then there was a sudden explosion – I woke up and saw sparks from the explosion. Everyone was running and shouting and I tried to get up and I couldn’t. Everyone was looking at me and I looked down – and I saw that my left leg was hanging by a piece of skin.”
Roël is under the care of the Belgian Institute for Veterans’ Affairs and War Victims. She has no interest in learning about the war that affected her life. Link -via YesButNoButYes
(image credit: Laurent Lenclud)
In 1997, home developer Kaufman & Broad built a house in Henderson, Nevada that looks exactly like the house that the Simpson family lives in, both inside and outside, including furniture and pictures on the walls. From an article in The Las Vegas Sun, written at the time of construction:
“The Simpsons”, the satirical, animated clan who put the phrases “Doh!” and “Eat my shorts” into the national vernacular, are celebrating their 10th year on television. And in true Simpson fashion, the producers of the show are doing the unexpected – recreating the family’s two-story domicile right down to the throw rugs. Builder Kaufman & Broad has taken the 724 Evergreen Terrace address out of two dimensions and cast it in three, placing it smack dab in the middle of Henderson, Nev., in a housing development appropriately called “Springfield.”
News Story and Gallery via GearFuse
A strange assortment of prehistoric crocodilyform fossils have been found in Africa. Crocodilyforms are ancient cousins of today’s alligators, crocodiles, and caimans.
For instance, the rodent-like RatCroc had buckteeth for rooting through the ground after tubers or simple animals.
The flat-bodied PancakeCroc was the “ultimate sit-and-wait predator,” Sereno said. The animal would lie motionless and “wait for something stupid” to swim into its rail-thin, 3-foot-long (0.9-meter-long) jaws, which were lined with rows of spiky teeth.
DuckCroc had a long, smooth, sensitive nose to poke through vegetation as well as hook-shaped teeth to snag frogs and small fish in shallow water.
And the plant-eating DogCroc had lanky legs that meant it was likely spry enough to run into the water if threatened.
By far the mightiest of the lot, BoarCroc was a 20-foot-long (6.1-meter-long) “saber-toothed cat in armor” that ate dinosaurs for dinner.
DuckCroc and DogCroc were previously known to scientists, and the rest are new discoveries by a team headed by Paul Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago. The expedition found fossils of all five in Niger and Morocco. Link (with video) -via Digg
(image credit: Mike Hettwer/National Geographic)
A crimson-crested woodpecker battles an olive whipsnake on Peru’s Yarapa River. One presumes that the snake was stealing eggs or attacking chicks in the woodpeckers’ nest. The battle ends by the 3:00 mark.
