Lisa Marcus's Liked Blog Posts

Habitable Planets in Other Solar Systems


Dreaming of relocating to another planet? The term "exoplanet" is used to describe any planet that orbits a star in a solar system other than our own. The Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo developed The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog to chart planets that are possibly habitable and have similarities to Earth. The catalog is based in part on data from NASA's Kepler Mission, which analyzes areas in our region of the Milky Way in search of planets from half to twice the size of Earth that are in a zone where the existence of liquid water and life is a possibility. 

Approximately 900 exoplanets have been confirmed by scientists, and there are over 2,500 others as yet unconfirmed. The Habitable Exoplanets Catalog currently lists nine potentially habitable planets discovered between September 2010 and December 2012. The most recent additions, Tau Ceti e and Tau Ceti f, are pictured above relative to the size of Earth. 

Learn more about the Habitable Exoplanets Catalog at the Planetary Habitability Laboratory. Link
 
(Photo Credit: Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico)


The Science Behind Productivity


(YouTube link

Last-minute shopping and ordering. Holiday cooking. Working overtime. This is a time of year when we all benefit from being as productive as possible. This video made by AsapSCIENCE and Gregory Ciotti gives tips on maximizing achievement based on scientific data. 

Visit Gregory Ciotti's article on the topic at Sparring Mind. Link


Fossils of the Earliest Dinosaur



A fossil uncovered in Africa over 70 years ago has led to modern researchers identifying what was likely the earliest dinosaur, Nyasasaurus parringtoni. In the 1930s, Rex Carringon, a fossil hunter from Cambridge, first made the find in southern Tanzania. It wasn't until 1975 that one of his students mentioned the fossil in his dissertation. But the significance of the fossilized remains was not discovered until University of Washington paleontologist Sterling Nesbitt and Sarah Werning of UC Berkeley led a research team that searched for them and other specimens, which sat in drawers at London's Natural History Museum for many years. The team discovered additional bones to support their research at the South African Museum

Nyasasaurus parringtoni is thought to have lived 2
45 million years ago, at least 10 to 15 million years earlier than any other known dinosaur. The creature was roughly the size of a Labrador retriever with a tail that was about five feet long. 

Read more on this story in the San Francisco Chronicle. Link

(Image Credit: Mark Witton, Natural History Museum)


Play an Online Game, Contribute to Neuroscience


Eyewire, an online multiplayer game pioneered by Professor Sebastian Seung at MIT, allows players to map the three-dimensional structure of neurons in the brain. Every player, in essence, becomes a contributor to important neuroscientific research. Scientiists hypothesize that all mental properties from memory to mental illness are encoded in the the connections between neurons. Until these pathways can be mapped, the hypothesis cannot be proven. 

Eyewire players help to "break the code" by analyzing brain images to map connections in the retina. According to a decription of the game given by its creators,  

Players will "trace the wires” of the brain as if absorbed in play with a 3D jigsaw puzzle consisting of image pieces computed by artificial intelligence. The experience will rely on the spectacular graphics and other motivators of video gaming, but allow users to apply their minds to a worthy cause. [The project] will transform 21st century science and society by mobilizing our collective hearts and minds to understand how the brain works and why it malfunctions.

Play, learn and discuss the game at Eyewire.org. Link

(Image Credit: Eyewire.org)


Face of Ancient Human Known as "The Hobbit" Revealed



Australian researchers have completed facial reconstruction on Homo Floresiensis, the 18,000-year-old skeletal remains of a human female thirty years of age, approximately 66 to 77 pounds and only three feet in height. The skeleton was found in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. The reconstruction project was lead by Dr. Susan Hayes, a researcher specializing in facial anthropology at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales. Dr. Hayes unveiled the facial model for the first time at an Australian archaeology conference this December.  

The skeleton, nicknamed "The Hobbit" by scientists, has been the subject of debate as to whether this early female represents an extinct species of human or is an anomaly. Prior to 2007, some scientists argued that the woman may have had a condition called microcephalia that made her small in stature. Yet a 2007 study revealed that the brain cavity of the specimen, which accommodated a brain roughly one third the size of a human's, was not consistent with that of a person suffering from microcephalia.

See more on this story at Live Science. Link via HuffPost Science 

(Image credit: University of Wollongong)


Unforgettable Children's Book Illustrations



Wayward trends of the art world. Alert, nurturing book editors who watch for and encourage fledgling artists in hopes of discovering the next Maurice Sendak. Illustrators using proximity and relationship to text, color, composition and other design techniques to capture the attention and stimulate the learning process of young readers. These are common elements of iconic illustrations in the great picture books of childhood.

Released in September 2012, Little Big Books: Illustrations for Children's Picture Books is a large-format collection of work by more than 100 acclaimed contemporary illustrators worldwide. The striking images included are the basis of a discussion on characteristics of the finest children's book illustrations and the secrets of the artists who ingrain these images in the minds of children. Visual memories that may persist well into adulthood. 

British illustrator Martin Salisbury addresses the important relationship between the text of children's picture books and the vivid imagery that brings it to life:

Right from the start, the words need to be an integral part of the shape of the layout — a visual element that is as important as anything else that appears on the page. The spread’s composition should seem ‘wrong’ before the text is added.
This specialized category of fine art rolls with the punches in the current state and operating structures of today's publishing houses. Sonja Commentz notes in the books' introduction:
 And yet there is trouble afoot: pandering to economic trends in the growing — and increasingly competitive — picture-book market, actual contents, creativity, and originality might lose out, right down to the point where bookstores dedicate entire pink-clad corners to a monoculture of princess books.

See more illustrations from the book at Brain Pickings. Link.

(Image credit: Chris Haughton)
 


Arctic Ice Flowers


These jagged, crystalline 'flowers' form on thin layers of new ice in the Arctic Ocean, and only under conditions of extremely low winds and temperatures under -7° F. Deposits take shape on the surface of sea ice when water vapor skips the liquid phase and becomes solid. The formations have a high salt content — three to five times that of sea water, according to estimates by experts. The salt accumulates from brine that is wicked up from the ocean through the ice surface on which they grow.

Nikon Small World 2012

Beauty is in the eye ...of the fruit fly! For 38 years, the Nikon Small World competition has selected prime photographic examples of microscopic form. Winning entries like the fruit fly eye above prove that beauty can be found in the essence of items that could be imagined as ingredients in a witches brew, such as fruit fly eyes, cricket tongue and mouse colon. So if your beer goggles don't have the desired effect at this year’s holiday party, it might pay to carry a microscope as backup. 

See the entire gallery of winning photographs for 2012 at Nikon Small World. Link. 

(Image credit: Dr. Michael John Bridge/University of Utah/Nikon Small World)


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Profile for Lisa Marcus

  • Member Since 2012/12/13


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