Yearly Archives: 2014

Imaging a new future

Posted on by

Today is when I proselytize about the new future that science is offering us.  I say offering because in the end that is all that we scientists can do.  We provide the human race with choices, and these can often be used for either good or bad.

But to make a long self-righteous moment short, I was looking at images in a spare moment today and came across this wonderful picture by Oli Scarff of Getty Images showing this rather cute little fellow named Leo.  Leo is nine months old and he is taking part in an experiment at the Birkbeck Babylab Center for Brain & Cognitive Development, in London.. Leo is outfitted with a halo of electroencephalogram electrodes (he’s even managed to pop one of them) to study brain activity while he examines various objects.

From the Birkbeck Baby lab’s website we have what that their mission is to learn:

  •  how babies recognize faces
  •  how babies learn to pay attention to some things and not others
  •  how they learn to understand what other people do and think, and
  •  how their language and understanding of the world develops

As a picture this photograph tells a wonderful story.  Baby Leo is happy.  The smile and the beautiful catch light tell us this. He is deeply involved in his work.  It is interesting how strong the association of pink with girls.  Because of the strong pink background, our first assumption is that Leo is a girl.  Of course, we wonder what he is thinking.  We even wonder how he is thinking.  And that after all is the whole point.

 

Abandoned store

Posted on by
Figure 1 - Abandoned store Sudbury, MA, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Abandoned store Sudbury, MA, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

There is what I assume to be an old store at the intersection of Haynes Road and Pantry Lane in Sudbury, Massachusetts.  It’s on my alternate road to work; so I pass it often and keep cataloging it as a building to be photographed.  I’ve gone there camera-ready several times, but the light was never quite right.  Recently, I’ve noticed that the early morning light is good this time of year, but stopping on the way to work has been impossible with the traffic.  By this time of year most of the snow has solidified into walls of ice on the sides of the road side.  You feel like you are driving in some kind of tunnel.  So there is never a way to safely pull over during rush hour.

In any event. on Sunday I took advantage of the shift in time (spring ahead) to stop and take a picture of this building.  The result is shown in Figure1.  I moved progressively into the scene and in the end I settled upon this door and window shot.  I love the peeling paint and the little flag that is always there.  I surprised myself by deciding that I favored color for the photograph.  It was not my original intent.  However, I realized that the colors of the building are part of what really appeals to me about the little structure, particularly the red, white, and blue of the tiny flag against the warm brown wood.  I am pretty happy with the end result.

Whoo gives a hoot?

Posted on by
Figure 1 - What a hoot! (c) DE Wolf, 2014.

Figure 1 – What a hoot! (c) DE Wolf, 2014.

There is a popular television commercial here in the States for GEICO insurance.  The commercial starts with a husband and wife in a car.  The husband is being a bit of a know-it-all until his wife ask him whether he knows that not all owls are wise, and then the scene shifts to the forest, where the lady owl says to her husband owl: “Don’t forget that I’m having lunch with Megan tomorrow.”  The husband owl responds “Whoo.” And as the conversation continues, it becomes clear that he is not paying a feather’s worth of attention and keeps responding: “Whoo.”

I had this poor fellow in mind this past Sunday when I was visiting our local farm-stand and came across the fine fellow of Figure 1.  What a hoot!

 

Long shadows, simple gifts, and tomatoes

Posted on by
Long Shadows with Simple Gifts, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 1 – Long Shadows with Simple Gifts, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I have spoken about the long shadows of a New England winter.  It is now March and near the equinox.  The sun is higher and in its own way casts long shadows bathed in a warming light.  It is a special time of year.  It is important to remember that all times of year are a simple gift to us.  One unique feature of a March light in northern climates is that when the sun is low it is unimpeded by trees, which have yet to put on summers leaves.

I was struck on Saturday morning by the bright rays of light entering my kitchen and the long shadows cast.  So I experimented with a few photographs that my mind created.  First is Figure 1, which I call “Long shadows with simple gifts” in honor of the Shaker like forms of the table legs on hardwood floors.  It seemed to call for a slight warm tone to emphasize the warmth of the light and to recall the original color of the wood. Figure 2, I entitle “Long shadows with tomatoes.”  I was really struck with the curious shadow cast by the handle of the kitchen faucet. I left it strictly in black and white.

I would rate these as almost successful.  With Figure 1, I did not quite achieve the effect that I wanted.  But every photograph is a learning experience.  And I guess that it is important to recognize that tomatoes can be glorious even in black and white.

Figure 2 - Long Shadows with Tomatoes, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

Figure 2 – Long Shadows with Tomatoes, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

A woman in the rain

Posted on by

Well, it is Sunday.  Readers will be happy to know that as of Friday women of Massachusetts are “safe” from upskirting!

I always enjoy at week’s end to scan the photo sites in search of beautiful images from the week – something to take my mind off all the gruesome news from around the world.  And today I was really struck by the oh so simple beauty of an image by Red Huber of the Orlando Sentinel showing a women with an umbrella walking passed a boarded up building on Washington Street in Orlando’s downtown.

I really love this picture: the soft pastels, the rain, the water running down and blurring the window so that the image is just so smeared out.  Then, of course, there is the beautiful young woman and the intent look on her face as she is determined to keep both herself and the papers that she is carrying dry against the deluge.

We have spoken before about the days of film and the unique artistic characteristics of various films.  And really this was the first aspect of the image that came to my mind when I saw it.  Pastels to me spell Kodachrome.  But a reader recently reminded me of the wonderful properties of Agfachrome so I am in a conundrum.  Perhaps some of the cognoscenti out there would like to share their impressions.  In the meantime bravo to Red Huber.

The skinny on up-skirting

Posted on by

Sigh! On Wednesday, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that so-called “Peeping Tom” laws that protect people from being photographed in dressing rooms and bathrooms, when nude or partially nude, do not apply to the infamous practice of up-skirting.  Up-skirting is the taking of pictures up a woman’s skirt and is usually performed with an innocuous cell phone – as opposed to a digital SLR with a 500 mm zoom lens.

It’s not really funny. Actually, it’s downright creepy.  It only goes to prove that whatever freedoms people are given, like the freedom to take pictures in public areas, some people are always ready to abuse these freedoms.  Still, the way that the law is written, it doesn’t apply to  protect fully clothed people in public areas, like the Boston Subway or MBTA, and as a result a man accused of doing this was exonerated by the SJC.

As I write, Massachusetts lawmakers on Beacon Hill are rushing to pass a law and have it on the Governor’s desk by yesterday.  Until then, all you perverts out there, be prepared for a good swift kick in the teeth! Probably any woman who does that will be prosecuted for assault.  What a world!

No cats were hurt in the production of this paradox

Image

Figure 1 - Falling cat landing on its feet. Multi exposure by 1894. Image from the Wikipedia and in the public domain because of its age.

Figure 1 – Falling cat landing on its feet. Multi exposure by Etienn-Jules Marey, 1894. Image from the Wikipedia and in the public domain because of its age.

An ailurophile and reader expressed concern about Schrodinger’s Cat in the Box Paradox and whether any cats had been hurt trying it.  Well, to my knowledge it is strictly a thought or Gedankenexperiment and has never been explicitly tried. No physicist would attempt it, as the outcome is painfully certain, that being the whole point of the paradox.

Also evidence suggests that many scientists are true cat lovers and such a thing would be most abhorrent to them.  Indeed, Schrödinger in his description of the paradox expresses anquish at the thought of hurting  a cat.  The other player in the conversation that evolved into the cat in the box paradox was physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein loved all animals but was especially fond of cats.  His male cat “Tiger” would get depressed on rainy days. Einstein would talk to Tiger when it rained in an attempt to sooth the feline breast.  Einstein is famous for remarking that, “A man has to work so hard so that something of his personality stays alive. A tomcat has it so easy, he has only to spray and his presence is there for years on rainy days.”  Sir Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physics, was also a great cat lover and is credited with the invention of the cat door flap.

My favorite among scientist cat lovers however, was Sir Thomas Huxley.  His son relates in his biography of his father how if he found a cat asleep on his favorite chair, he would ask one of his children to move it.  In a passionate letter to his daughter, Huxley defends a scratchy kitten who his wife has banned from the drawing room and beseeches his youngest daughter Ethel to intercede with mama:

“I wish you would write seriously to M. She is not behaving well to Oliver. I have seen handsomer kittens, but few more lively and energetically destructive. Just now he scratched away at something that M says cost 13s. 6d. a yard, and reduced more or less of it to combings.M therefore excludes him from the diningroom, and from all those opportunities of higher education which he would naturally have in my house.I have argued that it is as immoral to place 13s. 6d. a yardnesses within reach of kittens as to hang bracelets and diamond rings in the front garden. But in vain. Oliver is banished, and the protector (not Oliver) is sat upon. In truth and justice aid your Pa.”

So I believe that we can safely say that no cats were harmed in the production of the Schrödinger’s  Cat Paradox.

Cats did, needless-to-say, figure vigorously in the resolution of another nineteen century conundrum – namely whether and how a cat manages to land on his feet when dropped upside down. STOP!!! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!! NOT ALL CATS ARE EQUALLY AGILE.  The problem was solved by with the multiexposure photograph from 1894 by Étienne-Jules Marey shown in Figure 1 and also by his 1890 video.  Actually Markey’s work only showed the mechanics of the fall. A full explanation had to wait until the late 1960’s.  Marey was a contemporary of Muybridge and a pioneer in understanding and photographing human and animal motion.

The key to the cat’s dilemma, (actually it is not a dilemma for the cat, who because of her righting reflex knows just what she needs to do)see Figure 2, is that when held upside down she has no angular momentum, meaning that she is not rotating.  Angular momentum must be conserved.  So it must remain zero.  But the cat needs to turn or  she will crash on his back.

The cat accomplishes this by cleverly rotating the two halves of its body in opposite directions, thus maintaining zero angular momentum.  I have looked at a number of sites on the web where the rotating cat problem is explained.  The best is this one and I cannot do better myself.  Let me just give a little background. Stand and try to twist your torso, you will notice that your legs will push against the ground and will try to twist your lower body in the opposite direction. If you are in free fall there is nothing to push off of.  You can twist your torso in one direction but only if you twist your lower body in the opposite direction. Angular momentum stays as zero, but it doesn’t help at all as you twist like a bread tie.  That is until you remember the ice skater who brings her arms in to rotate faster.  Watch the video. The cat pulls in her front paws to speed the turning of her torso while at the same time extends her rear paws to slow the counter rotation of her lower body. She then reverses the process. It’s really cool physics and wonderfully revealed to the world by stop action photography.

 

Growing snowflakes

Posted on by

I have been complaining a lot about the snow and cold this winter. Nobody seems to be listening, and we are being hit yet again on the East Coast by the same storm that flooded California.  So I continue to look for the silver lining, the hidden beauty in all of this.

A while back we discussed the work of Snowflake Bentley who pioneered the technique of photographing snowflakes.  And if ever there was a place that the hidden beauty of nature is revealed, it is in the six point symmetrical structures of snowflakes revealed in a microscope.  Today I came across the work of Vyacheslav Ivanov, who takes this a step further by capturing the formation of these glorious ice crystals in wonderful time lapse sequences.  BTW – I think that I could live without the musical underscoring.

Ivanov torments us by not revealing the secret of how these images were made.  He is true to the “magicians’ code of secrecy.”  Crystal growth tends to evolve from a tiny point, a seed crystal, acting as what is referred to as a nucleation center.  The crystal just builds up and maintains symmetry. So i am thinking frigidly cold supersaturated water vapor chamber and a pin with a tiny crystal of ice.  Another possibility is a cold sheet of glass. Or perhaps it is indeed magic!

 

Selfie obsession

Posted on by
Figure 1 - Ellen Degeneres' "Oscar Selfie" and award winning tweet. Credit Ellen Degeneres Twitter.

Figure 1 – Ellen Degeneres’ “Oscar Selfie” and award winning tweet. Credit Ellen Degeneres Twitter.

Oh arg!  Sunday night was the Oscars, only the latest in the entertainment industry giving itself awards – seems at the very least weekly.  Sorry but this is the ultimate in self possesion, and yes, I am probably alienating a lot of people by saying so. Vote with your feet people!  This follows hard upon actor Seth Rogen’s outrage that a Senate Committee failed to show up for his testimony about Alzheimer’s disease.  Yes Alzheimer’s disease is truly terrible.  Yes we need more research into Alzheimer’s disease to find a cure.  Yes the United States congress is composed of a bunch of slackers.  But Rogen was giving personal not expert opinion.  Self-impressed a little?  I would be more concerned if Senators failed to show up to hear testimony from someone like Richard J. Rhodes, MD, who is the Director of the National Institute on Aging.  Another example, Martin Sheen is a political activist.  That’s fine as long as you recognize that you played the President of the United States on a television series, you never were really the president of the United States, Mr. Sheen.

I’m sorry, it’s just that I feel that there are more important people in this world. But clearly, I am in the minority as judged by the fact that Ellen Degeneres, the host of Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony, set a retweeting record with her star-studded selfie of Figure 1.  She received 2.7 million retweets and 1.4 million favorites.  Twitter in fact was briefly knocked off line when it received 700,000 retweets and 200,000 likes in 30 miniutes.  This eclipsed President Obama’s previous record with his tweet after winning the last presidential election.  That tweet, the so-called “Four More Years” tweet, featured an image of the president hugging First Lady Michelle Obama, and has been retweeted more than 780,000 times and favorite 295,000 times in about 15 months. Chicken feed! Degeneres’ photograph was taken selfie style by actor Bradley Cooper and included fellow nominees Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Lupita Nyong’o, and Jennifer Lawrence.

What does all this mean? I think that it may mean that we are shallow and superficial.  More to the point it serves as an amazing demonstration of just how rapidly images can spread around the world.  Even I am contributing to the spread of this image.  We now know the full implication of the term “its spread was viral over social media.”