Origins

Avoid These Common Mistakes

When someone talks, coughs or sneezes, they can release tiny droplets into the air. The particles of a sneeze, for example, can reach up to six feet. And, since the virus that causes COVID-19 commonly attacks the lungs, it can be attached to those tiny droplets. If another person touches or breathes them, they can become infected.

Maintaining physical distance, proper hand hygiene and avoiding touching your face are all important ways to help avoid the spread of infection. Wearing a face mask is also an important strategy in some situations. A face mask can help limit the spread of germs, which then protects others from becoming sick.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently recommends wearing a mask in public where physical distancing measures may be difficult to maintain. Exceptions include children under age 2, and anyone who has trouble breathing or is unable to remove the mask without assistance. You should also wear a mask if you are taking care of a person who has COVID-19, or if you are sneezing or coughing.

But, not all face masks are created equal. Cloth face coverings are not the same as surgical masks or N-95 respirators. The most common types of protection available include:

N-95 respirators. This offers more protection than a surgical mask because it is a type of respirator. They get their name from the fact that they filter out 95% of aerosols. But, these masks are intended to fit with a proper seal.

Surgical masks. Also known as a medical mask, these filter out large particles in the air.

Cloth masks. Typically hand-sewn, these are created with fabric and may be easier to find. Cloth masks should be made with multiple layers of fabric and should fit securely around your face, completely covering your nose and mouth. A wire, for example, could help keep it securely in place.

Regardless of the mask you choose, you must wear it properly to achieve protection. It is imperative to keep the mask on securely over both your nose and mouth. The bridge of your nose should be covered at all times. This helps keep particles from exiting and entering your mask.

Each individual in your home should own their own mask. If your masks are reusable, remember to clean and store them safely.

No matter what type of mask you wear, be sure to take the proper precautions when putting it on and taking it off. This is as much a protective measure as wearing the mask. For example, you should never touch the outside of the mask.

We are making history!

World Monuments Fund: https://www.wmf.org/get-involved

Archaeological Institute of America: https://www.archaeological.org/giving

Friends of Herculaneum Society: http://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/

Light and maneuverable is probably best when facing a rex. It’s big and it’s powerful but it’s not going to making any quick sharp turns any time soon.

According to our current estimates, a T. rex would be able to crush a small car with its jaws, so realistically, no amount of armour is gonna protect you if it grabs you.

If the T. rex manages to grab you you’re dead regardless. It could probably eat you within a couple of bites if it was trying.

Figures 1 & 2: Theoretical T. rex bite-force model fucking up a mini. Thank you, Bill Oddie and BBC’s The Truth About Killer Dinosaurs.

As far as armour goes, lighter is better, and at the end of the day isn’t going to mean shit anyway. T. rex can’t slash at you with claws, so it’s bite or bust, and if it bites YOU’RE bust. So, lets say a point to Weed Shorts. Why NOT fight a T. rex butt naked with swords.

T. rex had good binocular vision. Don’t believe Jurassic Park’s lies -T. rex was a hunter and could probably see you brilliantly whether you moved or not.

That said, a T. rex’s eyesight will work about the same as modern birds of prey. Think hawk, or eagle. I reckon light bouncing off anything would be a fairly minor hindrance, or at least, wouldn’t affect it any more than any other hunting bird.

So, using light to blind and confuse the rex? May potentially work but might be hard and wouldn’t do much for long. Don’t rely on this for strategy.

T. rex actually had gastralia, sometimes called ‘belly-ribs’. These protected and supported the internal organs.There would also be some seriously thick abdominal muscles to get through.

Unless you’re planning to do some precision stabbing with a very long sword, chances are you’re not gonna be killing a rex by slicing open it’s stomach. Also, being under its stomach is gonna put you in-reach of the Jaws Of Death.

I’m not sure how easy it would be, or how well it would work, to try and cut a T. rex’s tendons. Theoretically, sounds like it should work. However, you’re gonna need a lot of strength to get through them, probably.

I’d personally cut the throat rather than stab through the eyes once the rex is down, but that’s probably personal preference. Once you’ve felled it, it’s dead either way! A T. rex unable to hunt is a dead T. rex.

Figure 3: The gastralia of a T. rex. Bless u Scott Hartman for your skeletal references.

As far as attack goes, the belly is not as weak a spot as it seems. So, point to Weed Shorts on his execution plan. Sounds pretty solid.

Artificial Intelligence Uses Less Than Two Minutes of Videogame Footage to Recreate Game Engine

This story is already doing the rounds but is still very interesting - Machine Learning research from Georgia Tech manages to clone game design from a video recording.

The top GIF is the reconstructed clone, the bottom gif is from the video recording:

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new approach using an artificial intelligence to learn a complete game engine, the basic software of a game that governs everything from character movement to rendering graphics.

Their AI system watches less than two minutes of gameplay video and then builds its own model of how the game operates by studying the frames and making predictions of future events, such as what path a character will choose or how enemies might react.

To get their AI agent to create an accurate predictive model that could account for all the physics of a 2D platform-style game, the team trained the AI on a single “speedrunner” video, where a player heads straight for the goal. This made “the training problem for the AI as difficult as possible.”

Their current work uses Super Mario Bros. and they’ve started replicating the experiments with Mega Man and Sonic the Hedgehog as well. The same team first used AI and Mario Bros. gameplay video to create unique game level designs.

Automatica

Nigel Stanford is releasing an album with music performed by industrial robots:

3D Coke Sign in Times Square

Last month I shared a post on a large scale robotic display in Times Sqaure. It was officially launched last week and Loren Brinton put together a video showcasing it:

FARMBOT GENESIS: This robot is changing farming as we know it

And the best part about this technology is that it’s open source, meaning you can build one yourself from the blueprints that are available for anyone to download. 

4DViews

French production company specializing in volumetric filmmaking to create high quality assets for film production and AR ‘hologram’ actors captured as moving 3D models (ignore the twinky-twonky tech industry music):

Presenting our volumetric capture technology and its applications: hologram, VR, AR, VFX .. and so on.

Whilst this is not the first example, there are a couple of noteworthy things. First, there is a selection of interactive examples that run in browser which you can find here

Second, there are a few downloadable examples which can be used with either Unity or a variety of 3D modelling software (I presume this could be theoretically remixably in some way), which you can find here

People who took the news of feathered dinosaurs like this:

And those who took it like this:

An audience member stopped World Science Festival host Jim Holt from speaking over physics professor Veronika Hubeny

So, after thinking about this over night, I’ve decided to share something that happened at the WORLD SCIENCE FESTIVAL yesterday afternoon in NYC that changed me. Or rather made me step into who I am in a larger way.

As some on my feed have seen, I was live-feeding the beginning of the panel discussion on FB. That panel was made up of some of the greatest and most famous minds in the world in Inflationary Cosmology, String Theory, Cosmology and Physics based Philosophy. The panel was made up of 5 men and 1 woman. And the moderator was a science writer and journalist for The New Yorker.

In the first hour of the panel discussion you can see clearly, if watching the video, that Veronika Hubeny, the only woman on the panel is barely given any opportunity to speak. And the Moderator, Jim Holt even acknowledges this.

In the last 20-30 minutes of the 90 minute discussion Jim Holt finally pushes the conversation to Hubeny’s field of expertise, string theory, and this is what ensued:

He asked her to describe her two theories of string theory that seem to contradict one another.

And THEN, without letting her answer, proceeded to answer for her and describe HER theories in detail without letting her speak for herself.

We could clearly see that she was trying to speak up. But he continued to talk over her and dominate the space for several minutes.

I should say that this panel was taking place in a large auditorium as it is an extremely high-profile and always sold-out event. And the panel discussion was being live-streamed across the world and they say that millions of people watch these videos after they are made public. (Which they already are).

So at this point, after seeing very clearly that she was not going to be given space to speak and in fact having her own theories described to the audience by the moderator, I am in full outrage. My body is actually beginning to shake. The sexism is beyond blatant. It is happening on stage and NO ONE, not a single other physicist or panelist is stepping in to say anything about it. And I can hear other audience members around me, both men and women becoming more and more agitated with what is happening. Jim Holt, even at one point, asks Veronica a question and she laughs because he has been answering his own questions about her work…and he makes fun of her for ‘giggling’.

So at some point while he is Still talking about Her theories, I just can’t handle it any longer.

With my hands shaking,

I finally say from my seat in the 2nd row of the audience, as clearly, directly and loudly as possible;

“Let. Her. Speak. Please!”

The moderator stops.

They all stop.

The auditorium drops into silence.

You could hear a pin drop.

And then the audience explodes with applause and screams.

Jim Holt eventually sat back, only after saying I was heckling him And he let her speak. And of course, she was brilliant.

———————–

So, the panel discussion ends.

My hands are still shaking. I’m still upset by the incredible sexism that has been demonstrated this afternoon. But I also realize that I just spoke up in an auditorium full of people that are listening to people that are considered gods in the international science world. I was just overwhelmed by it all

We get up to leave.

And then it happens.

Person after person come up to me. Both men and women.

The first woman, right behind me, reaches over and embraces me and says, “Oh my god. what you said was the most important thing that was said all day. Thank you. Thank you.”

And then people start filing out of their aisles and wind their way over to me:

“Was that you? Thank you so much for speaking up. Thank you.”

“Was that you? Oh god, what he was doing was horrific. Thank you. I wanted to do something but didn’t know how”

“Was that you? I wish I had the courage to say something, thank you! Thank you so much”

“Was that you? You said what everyone here was thinking. Look I had even been writing in my notebook what you eventually said (shows me his notebook with ‘let her speak’ written over and over.) But you said it. You said it. Thank you.”

“Was that you? Thank you! I felt so powerless to do anything.”

And on.

So we were all thinking this.

—- So I walked out. And my friend who was sitting about 8 rows behind me, came up to me with a huge grin and said “That was you, wasn’t it? Of course it was. YES!!!!! I will be telling this story for years.”

And the whole time, my hands are still shaking. And I’m felling light-headed. And I just want to scream out into the lobby “WHY IS THIS SEXISM STILL HAPPENING? WHY, does someone like me, with No status in that room, have to be so extraordinarily bold and speak up? And why was it so frightening to do so?”

And I’m thinking. “God, please god let this be an opening for those that were here today and the tens of thousands that watched the live-streaming of the panel yesterday and the hundreds of thousands that will watch the video this year- to speak up when we see this happening. And please let me not be afraid to do this again …and again …and again” Because it was scary.

Colour-blindness is not exactly something high on an artist’s list of things to consider, so you might be wondering why it’s important at all. The simple answer is, your audience. Color blindness, colour vision deficiency, or CVD, affects approximately 1 in 12 dmab (8%), and 1 in 200 dfab people in the world. 

While you as an artist may have Trichromacy (full color vision), if you end up with a color blind client, or even if you are just designing something for a public audience, knowing what color blindness is and how it affects the way other people view your work is important.

Four Types Of Color Blindness

Protanopia is a severe type of color vision deficiency caused by the complete absence of red retinal photoreceptors.

Those affected have difficulties distinguishing between blue and green colors and also between red and green colors. It is a form of dichromatism in which the subject can only perceive light wavelengths from 400 to 650 nm, instead of the usual 700 nm.

Pure reds cannot be seen, instead appearing black; purple colors cannot be distinguished from blues; more orange-tinted reds may appear as very dim yellows, and all orange–yellow–green shades of too long a wavelength to stimulate the blue receptors appear as a similar yellow hue.

Protanopes are more likely to confuse:

Black with many shades of red

Dark brown with dark green, dark orange and dark red

Some blues with some reds, purples and dark pinks

Mid-greens with some oranges

Deuteranopia is a type of color vision deficiency where the green photoreceptors are absent.

It affects hue discrimination in the same way as protanopia, but without the dimming effect.

Deuteranopes are more likely to confuse:

Mid-reds with mid-greens

Blue-greens with grey and mid-pinks

Bright greens with yellows

Pale pinks with light grey

Mid-reds with mid-brown

Light blues with lilac

Lacking the short-wavelength cones, those affected see short-wavelength colors (blue, indigo and a spectral violet) greenish and drastically dimmed, some of these colors even appear as black.

Yellow is indistinguishable from pink, and purple colors are perceived as various shades of red.

Tritanopes are more likely to confuse:

Light blues with greys

Dark purples with black

Mid-greens with blues

Oranges with reds

People with monochromatic vision can see no colour at all and their world consists of different shades of grey ranging from black to white, rather like only seeing the world on an old black and white television set. Achromatopsia is extremely rare, occurring only in approximately 1 person in 33,000 and its symptoms can make life very difficult. Usually someone with achromatopsia will need to wear dark glasses inside in normal light conditions.

In cerebral achromatopsia, a person cannot perceive colors even though the eyes are capable of distinguishing them. Some sources do not consider these to be true color blindness, because the failure is of perception, not of vision. They are forms of visual agnosia.

Color Spectrum Comparisons

Checking Your Work In Photoshop

Photoshop has a feature for viewing your work in Protanopia and Deuteranopia colour blindness filters.

Source

Source

Fashion Visuals with 3D Scanned Models

Graphics project by Tobias Gremmler visually deconstructs 3D models into dynamic threads, particles and surfaces:

Fabric and skin is translated into a digital mesh that acts like a dynamic membrane between body and the surrounding space. Like fashion, it constructs/deconstructs identity and becomes a media that propagates information in form of textures, patterns and shapes. The work visualizes this underlying forces in forms of threads weaving together and tearing apart fragments of cloth and skin. Exhibited as scenographic media installation at Osage Gallery during HK|Runway.

Organised by Osage Art Foundation and The Hong Kong Design Institute, HK|Runway! is an unconventional multidisciplinary project in which fashion is redefined as multifaceted enterprise and artistic process. By juxtaposing garments, design, art, music, choreography, and architecture, HKIRunway! moves beyond the traditional givens of a fashion week-catwalks.

Using a series of sensors, Dua’s bot detects when a person is about to run into something and beeps to them. The project took her a total of four days to build. Her prize is every Marvel fan’s dream.

For a start, of course a lot of science sounds dumb.  Science is all in the slogging through the minutiae, the failures, the tedious process of filling in the blank spaces on the map because it ain’t ’t glamorous, but if someone doesn’t do it, no one gets to know for sure what’s there.

Someone’s gotta spend their career measuring fly genitalia under a microscope. Frankly, I’m grateful to the person who is tackling that tedium, because if they didn’t, I might have to, and I don’t wanna.

But let’s talk about why we should care about this particular science and spend money on it. (And I’ll even answer without even glancing at the article.)

Off the top of my head?

-advances in robotics

-advances in miniature robotics

-advances in flight technology

-advantages in simulating and understanding the mechanics and programming of small intelligences

-ability to grow crops in places uninhabitable by insects (space? cold/hot? places where honeybees are non-native and detrimental to the ecosystem?)

-ability to improve productivity density of crops and feed more people

-less strain on bees, who do poorly when forced to pollinate monocultures of low nutrition plants

-ability to run tightly controlled experiments on pollination, on the effects of bees on plant physiology, on ecosystem dynamics, etc

-fucking robot bees, my friend

-hahaha think how confused those flowers must be

Also worth keeping in mind? People love, love, love framing science in condescending and silly sounding terms as an excuse to cut funding to vital programs. *Especially* if it’s also associated with something (gasp) ‘inappropriate’, like sex or ladyparts. This is why research for a lot of women’s issues, lgbtq+ issues, minorities’ issues, and vulnerable groups in general’s issues tends to lag so far behind the times. This is why some groups are pushing so hard to cut funding for climate change research these days.

Anything that’s acquired governmental funding has been through and intensely competitive, months-to-years long screening by EXPERTS IN THE FIELD who have a very good idea what research is likely to be most beneficial to that field and fill a needed gap.

Trust me.  The paperwork haunts my nightmares.

So, we had a joke in my lab: “Nice work, college boy.” It was the phrase for any project that you could spend years and years working on and end up with results that could be summed up on a single, pretty slide with an apparently obvious graph. The phrase was taken from something a grower said at a talk my advisor gave as a graduate student: “So you proved that plants grow better when they’re watered? Nice work, college boy.”

But like, the thing is? There’s always more details than that. And a lot of times it’s important that somebody questions our assumptions. 

A labmate of mine doing very similar research demonstrated that our assumptions about the effect of water stress on plant fitness have been wrong for years because *nobody had thought to separate out the different WAYS a plant can be water stressed.* (Continuously, in bursts, etc.). And it turns out these ways have *drastically different effects* with drastically different measures required for response to them to keep from losing lots of money and resources in agriculture.

Nice work, college boy. :p

Point the second: surprise! Anna Haldewang is an industrial design student.  She developed this in her product design class.  And, as far as I can tell, she has had no particular funding at all for this project, much less billions of dollars. 

‘grats, Anna, you FUCKING ROCK.