Table Scraps
Posted on December 14th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology.
I can’t remember where I found the link to this, but I’m really glad I did.
The Digestive Table by Amy Young is a whole little kitchen based biome that helps you use your chow thoroughly. It’s got worms and bugs and everything.
Materials: Live Red Wiggler composting worms, sowbugs, food scraps, shredded paper, landscaping fabric, polyethylene, security camera, LCD screen, infrared filters, live houseplants and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council Certified) oak plywood, stained with a mixture of boiled red cabbage and worm compost tea.
How much is that Each?
Posted on December 5th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology, socio, science.
Futurepundit offers a comprehensive rundown of the jet setting gamete market.
The global market for sperm exports has been estimated at between £25 million and £50 million a year. The US market is worth £5 million and £10 million and the European market is of similar size.
Futurepundit offers a comprehensive rundown of the jet setting gamete market.
Upscale ladies, unwilling or unable to spawn through more traditional methods are shelling out large for people seed.
Meanwhile, women willing to produce ova in multiples are gadding about laying eggs for profit in foreign climes.
All this is interesting, but perhaps not as interesting as learning that
Denmark boasts an ever-growing sperm lake.
And even that is not as interesting as finding out about Hamster-Human Hybrids.
by JOVE
Posted on November 19th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, video, biology, web, science.
JOVE - the Journal of Visualized Experiments - has a small but growing collection of scientific experiments, the process of which has been captured on video for instructional purposes.
There’s some interesting stuff, including this video of the dissectionof a larval Central Nervous System.
[not]Automatic computer music
Posted on November 16th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, music, biology, tech.
Binocular neurons, optical flow fields
Posted on November 14th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology, science.
Via the excellent Biosingularity I found this great article about the visual process of the blowfly.The article describes a relationship that exists between distinct nerve cells in the signal processing path in the fly’s brain. Two cells, one in each eye, have a direct relationship which helps the organism merge and respond to visual information.
That’s pretty excellent. To figure it out, they had to individually dye fly neurons and then bake them with lasers. Which sounds difficult and tedious. Hurray for Science!
The language is even better than the science
It is important for the analysis of flow fields that the movement information from both eyes is merged so that the whole flow field can be assessed.
I think that’s my new motto.
killing anything they can get their jaws on
Posted on September 13th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images, nano, biology, science.
This article on the use of swarm-based computational models to solve intractable optimization problems made the ants seem pretty beneign.
Tiny, mannered coprocessors sniffing out trails of synthetic pheromones with precision engineered carbon nanotubes. It’s really very civilized.
Real ant behaviour is generally brutal and efficient. In comparison with their algorythmic progeny, incarnate wetware components of swarm based computational systems have strict caloric parameters.
These are the simple necessities of daily life. Particularly if you are a tropical type ant subject to indignities.
The tiny parasitic fly visible above the leaf is attempting to dart down and lay an egg in the ant’s body. If the fly is successful, the egg hatches into a larva that will consume the ant’s internal organs.
Venomous fish
Posted on September 4th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images, biology.
While the gallery of venomous fish is interesting, the best thing about this article is learning that:
Fish with a biting bite outnumber all other venomous vertebrates combined,
Killer Flatworm
Posted on February 20th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology.
This Killer Flatworm encases its prey in a bubble of toxic fluid before ingesting its tender flesh.
Sure, it doesn’t duel with its penis
but we can’t have everything…
but you can watch the video!
-w.
Imaginal Expression - bruised and scabbed dancing virtual flesh machine
Posted on February 20th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, video, images, biology.
The city of Surrey is not built for pedestrians. From the skytrain I walked 2 km along a wide highway bordered by walled suburban enclaves and strip malls to get to the City of Surrey Art Gallery. I was there to see an installation by by Winnipeg based artist Reva Stone.
This video clip of Imaginal Expression doesn’t really do justice to the exhibition. These still images better depict the scale of things.
From the Artist’s Statement:
When the visitor enters the gallery space, a large, constantly moving “soup” of molecular components is seen projected on the wall. Real time animation based on inverse kinematic physics causes this motion to constantly change with no repetition. As the visitor is sensed in the gallery space some of the components begin to coalesce into a complete molecule that follows themovement of the visitor. This response is initiated by a computer visioning system that was developed aspart of the software. In addition to responding to the movement of a viewer, a molecule also has thecapability to exchange its fleshy covering with another molecule when the motion of more than one viewer brings them into .proximity with each other. When a visitor leaves the space, that molecule will degenerate over time. As a result, the visitor participates in a continuous cycle of generation, mutation and dissolution.
Initially I was alone in the large spare white room where the work is installed. The projection encompassed one full wall - images of thickened oblong twisting forms texture mapped with scaned body bits [skin, bruises, etc] writhed among thin red undulating strands. All the shapes tended to cluster loosely around the centre of the display space, occasionally drifting off on some random trajectory, bending and changing shape as they moved.
Maybe it was that I was there alone, but the interactive element seemed lacking. The continual drift of the shapes on the wall was entrancing in its way but lacked order. I tried moving around to coax the display into some sort of reactivity but to no avail.
Still, the scope of the piece was impressive and the continually shifting mass of shapes was hypnotic in its way.
this is not reassuring
Posted on February 12th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, biology, socio, borg.
FT.com / By industry / IT - US group implants electronic tags in workers:
“An Ohio company has embedded silicon chips in two of its employees - the first known case in which US workers have been �tagged� electronically as a way of identifying them.”
-w.
Insect Lab
Posted on February 12th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, images, biology.
Mike Libby is an artist from the East coast of the USA who makes really fantastically
beautiful insect sculptures.
-w.
What lurks beneath - flesh-sucking sex fiends - National - smh.com.au
Posted on February 6th, 2006 by eightprime.
Categories: blog, words, biology.
Found this a few days ago on money not art and it made my day. In addition to engaging in procreative duels with their gelatinous little hermaphroditic penii, the newly discovered species of oyster leeches - Imogine lateotentare
“They are very evil little animals, which is why they are so fascinating to work with,” Dr Johnston said. “They squirm around these communities [of creatures which live on hard surfaces and cannot move] and attack the barnacles. They squirt digestive juices into them and suck their flesh out.”
lovely.
-w.