science

%feed
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.theregister.com%2Ffeed%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F2016%2F07%2F26%2Fdolly_sheep_clones_science_age%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
Dolly the sheep clones have aged well, say scientists

Nottingham's cloning success not usual, though

Scientists working on a long-term study of the world's first cloned animal, Dolly the sheep, have reported that cloned sheep age normally in a paper published today in Nature Communications.…

science

1469548782000

science

%feed
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fjan-millsapps-phd%2Fwhy-we-are-not-ready-for-_b_11115338.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
Why We Are Not Ready For Mars
After weeks of witnessing disturbing events that exemplify how angry, vindictive and dangerous humanity can be when it turns on itself, Mars -- as an escapist adventure situated enticingly in our near futures -- looks great in comparison.

Human exploration and eventual habitation of Mars is often described as the ultimate do-over, the proverbial slate wiped clean, a place where we can make a fresh start. When we get there, we will experience the unblemished purism of a new world and will have unprecedented opportunities to pursue science, increase our knowledge of the universe, extend our species beyond our native planet, perhaps even to preserve the human race if something untoward happens to our home planet Earth.

Yes, we may die trying (Musk seems pretty certain of this). It may take the next few decades to do it successfully (NASA's road to Mars is a long meandering one). We may adopt altruistic values and a commitment to off-planet diversity and get near-laughed off the playing field for spending too much time selecting the humans and not enough raising the money or acquiring the tech (Mars One).

The drive to get humans to Mars is real. Plans are afoot. Odds of success are being calculated. Money is being spent. Gobs of it. The primary emphasis is on the hardware needed to get there: sturdy conveyances, unfailing life support systems, radiation shielding and robust boosters to get the whole thing off the ground. We calculate our readiness factor on advancements in technology, while paying much less attention to the minds and spirits of the fragile humans who will be on board.

After a successful journey, safe landing, and initial check that pre-constructed habs and life support are operational, the forced unity and self-discipline required by a pressure-packed mission will begin to dissipate. Eventually, as more humans arrive, more infrastructure is put in place, and day-to-day survival becomes less stressful, some sort of social fabric will emerge. Will humans on Mars mirror and eventually become as divided and destructive as their Earthly counterparts?

"2016-07-21-1469121168-916716-MarsReady.jpg"

Will Mars become another Earth? (photo collage by author)

Susan Ip Jewell is an L.A.-based physician whose organization "Mars Without Borders" seeks to prepare humans for off-world exploration, primarily via "analog experiences" in Mars-like environments that are not so difficult to find on Earth. She's done numerous stints at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah and is preparing for an even longer stay at the Flashline Arctic Research Station.

"2016-07-21-1469121345-4167080-SusanJewell.jpg"

Susan Ip Jewell, M.D. with robot companion

Jewell insists we look at future space exploration -- and eventual human habitation of Mars -- as an opportunity to address the issues that divide humans on Earth. "We are so fractured, we are so disconnected from each other as a human race right now... How do you expect us to succeed on another planet?"

In an interview for the documentary Madame Mars: Women and the Quest for Worlds Beyond, Jewell describes the borders humans have constructed on Earth: geographical, political, cultural, belief-driven, racial and gender divides. "Earth normal" is distrusting those who are different from us. Our social values are built on divisiveness, not unity.

Clearly this won't work on Mars. Jewell argues that a successful human mission to Mars and other deep space destinations will depend on a "space without borders."

"If we have borders when we go out beyond space," Jewell said, "we would just replicate the disastrous systems that we have here on Earth."

Those who seek opportunities in distant lands are often trying to escape the difficulties or challenges disrupting their present-day lives, in favor of finding a better life elsewhere. If Mars represents a better life -- even one with intense radiation, blood-boiling atmospheric pressure, frigid temperatures and global sandstorms -- we need to ask ourselves, will those who settle on Mars still be better off than if they'd stayed on Earth?

Most debates to date over governance on Mars suggests the settlers will build their own society from within, develop and institute their own rules of behavior, and set up a way to settle the inevitable disputes. As much as all of humanity will be pulling for these first off-Earth settlers to succeed, many retain a nagging doubt over whether this will be possible. Humans may not be ready for Mars.

Before we climb on the expertly constructed spaceships, before we breathe the artificially generated air or reconstitute the dried packets of astronaut food, we need to repair the mental constructs that create Earth-based boundaries that have led to hatred of others, warfare, terrorism, subjugation of entire races or genders.

Before we go to Mars, certainly before we soil another planet, let's reframe the human associations we live with daily, with an eye toward how we will represent our species when we travel to other worlds. Let's do anything we can on Earth to boost our own confidence that humans will succeed when they put their off-Earth lives together and build communities on a whole new planet.

The early Mars settlers will be us, but they do not need to be like us.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

science

1469546101000

astronomy

%feed
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/F5lgJyhSNJQ/our-solar-systems-orbit-through-milky-ways-mysterious-dark-matter-disk-could-dislodge-objects-from-t-1.html
Our Solar System's Orbit Through Milky Way's Mysterious Disk "Could Dislodge Objects from the Oort Belt and Send Them Hurtling Toward Earth"

If the solar system, as it orbited the center of the galaxy, were to move through the Milky Way's dark-matter disk, Harvard physicists theorize that the gravitational effects from the dark matter might be enough to dislodge comets and other objects from what's known as the Oort Cloud and send them hurtling toward Earth. Their theory suggests that those oscillations occur approximately every 32-35 million years, a figure that is on par with evidence collected from impact craters suggesting that increases in meteor strikes occur over similar periods.

“Those objects are only weakly gravitationally bound,” said Harvard's Lisa Randall. “With enough of a trigger, it's possible to dislodge objects from their current orbit. While some will go out of the solar system, others may come into the inner solar system, which increases the likelihood that they may hit the Earth.”

Though the exact nature of dark matter remains unknown, physicists have been able to infer its existence based on the gravitational effect it exerts on ordinary matter. Though dark matter is otherwise believed to be non-interacting, Lisa Randall and Matthew Reece, assistant professor of physics, suggested that a hypothetical type of dark matter could form a disk of material that runs through the center of the galaxy.

“We have some genuinely new ideas,” Randall said. “I'll say from the start that we don't know if they're going to turn out to be right, but what's interesting is that this opens the door to a whole class of ideas that haven't been tested before, and potentially have a great deal of interesting impacts.”

Working with postdoctoral fellow Jakub Scholtz, Randall and Reece are also investigating whether the newly proposed form of dark matter may play a role in one of the largest mysteries in astrophysics: how the massive black holes at the centers of galaxies form.

“One possibility is that it may ‘seed' black holes at the center of galaxies,” she said. “This is a work in progress. It's an entirely new scenario we're working out, so I don't want to overstate anything, but it's a very interesting possibility.”

Though the hypothesis adds additional complexity to a number of already-thorny questions about the nature of the universe, Randall believes it will be important to understand if a portion — even a relatively small portion — of dark matter behaves in unexpected ways.

Our Sun orbits around the Galactic center, taking approximately 250 million years to make a complete revolution. However, this trajectory is not a perfect circle. The Solar System weaves up and down, crossing the plane of the Milky Way approximately every 32 million years, which coincides with the presumed periodicity of the impact variations. This bobbing motion, which extends about 250 light years above and below the plane, is determined by the concentration of gas and stars in the disk of our Galaxy. This ordinary “baryonic” matter is concentrated within about 1000 light years of the plane. Because the density drops off in the vertical direction, there is a gravitational gradient, or tide, that may perturb the orbits of comets in the Oort cloud, causing some comets to fly into the inner Solar System and periodically raise the chances of collision with Earth. However, the problem with this idea is that the estimated galactic tide is too weak to cause many waves in the Oort cloud.

In their new study, Randall and Reece focus on this second hypothesis and suggest that the galactic tide could be made stronger with a thin disk of dark matter. Dark disks are a possible outcome of dark matter physics, as the authors and their colleagues recently showed. Here, the researchers consider a specific model, in which our Galaxy hosts a dark disk with a thickness of 30 light years and a surface density of around 1 solar mass per square light year (the surface density of ordinary baryonic matter is roughly 5 times that, but it's less concentrated near the plane).

6a00d8341bf7f753ef01a3fcff64d7970b-800wi

Although one has to stretch the observational constraints to make room, their thin disk of dark matter is consistent with astronomical data on our Galaxy. Focusing their analysis on large (>20km) craters created in the last 250 million years, Randall and Reece argue that their dark disk scenario can produce the observed pattern in crater frequency with a fair amount of statistical uncertainty.

Randall and Reece's dark disk model is not made of an ordinary type of dark matter. The most likely candidate of dark matter—known as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)—is expected to form a spherical halo around the Milky Way, instead of being concentrated in the disk. This WIMP dark matter scenario has been remarkably successful in explaining the large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe. But, there is a long-standing problem on small-scales—the theory generally predicts overly dense cores in the centers of galaxies and clusters of galaxies, and it predicts a larger number of dwarf galaxy satellites around the Milky Way than are observed. While some of these problems could be resolved by better understanding the physics of baryonic matter (as it relates, for example, to star formation and gas dynamics), it remains unclear whether a baryonic solution can work in the smallest mass galaxies (with very little stars and gas) where discrepancies are observed.

Alternatively, this small-scale conflict could be evidence of more complex physics in the dark matter sector itself. One solution is to invoke strong electromagnetic-like interactions among dark matter particles, which could lead to the emission of “dark photons”. These self-interactions can redistribute momentum through elastic scattering, thereby altering the predicted distribution of dark matter in the innermost regions of galaxies and clusters of galaxies as well as the number of dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way.

Although self-interacting dark matter could resolve the tension between theory and observations at small-scales, large-scale measurements of galaxies and clusters of galaxies only allow a small fraction (less than 5%) of the dark matter to be self-interacting. Recently, Randall, Reece, and their collaborators showed that if a portion of the dark matter is self-interacting, then these particles will collapse into a dark galactic disk that overlaps with the ordinary baryonic disk .

So, did a thin disk of dark matter trigger extinction events like the one that snuffed out the dinosaurs? The evidence is still far from compelling. First, the periodicity in Earth's cratering rate is not clearly established, because a patchy crater record makes it difficult to see a firm pattern. It is also unclear what role comets may have played in the mass extinctions. The prevailing view is that the Chicxulub crater, which has been linked to the dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago, was created by a giant asteroid, instead of a comet. Randall and Reece were careful in acknowledging at the outset that “statistical evidence is not overwhelming” and listing various limitations for using a patchy crater record. But the geological data is unlikely to improve in the near future, unfortunately.

On the other hand, advances in astronomical data are expected with the European Space Agency's Gaia space mission, which was launched last year and is currently studying the Milky Way in unprecedented detail. Gaia will observe millions of stars and measure their precise distances and velocities. These measurements should enable astronomers to map out the surface-density of the dense galactic disk as a function of height. Close to the plane, astronomers could then directly see whether there is a “disk within the disk” that has much more mass than we could account for with the ordinary baryonic matter. Evidence of such a dark disk would allow better predictive modeling of the effects on comets and on the life of our planet.

Over the next several years, Randall said, the Gaia satellite will perform a precise survey of the position and velocity of as many as a billion stars, giving scientists far greater insights into the shape of the galaxy and into the potential presence of a disk of dark matter.

The image at the top of the page above is composite of the dark matter disk (red contours) and the Atlas Image mosaic of the Milky Way obtained as part of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology. (J. Read & O. Agertz)

Today's Most Popular

The Daily Galaxy via news.harvard.edu and Daisuke Nagai, Department of Physics, Yale University and American Physical Society

Image credits: With thanks to APS/Alan Stonebraker

The "Oort Star" --Did a Rogue Star Pass Through Our Solar System? (Weekend Feature)

Is a "Dark Attractor" Pulling Galaxies Towards a Colossal Unseen Mass? - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

Will CERN's LHC Solve the Mystery of "The Great Attractor"? - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

The Nemesis Conjecture: Is an Unseen Binary Companion of the Sun Sending Comets Towards Earth?

astronomy

1469546099000

astronomy

%feed
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond/~3/aV0BF1f2fik/new-insights-about-the-milky-ways-massive-spinning-halo.html
New Insights About the Milky Way's Massive Spinning Halo

Astronomers at the University of Michigan discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy's disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust. This new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets, and galaxies like our own, and what the future holds for these galaxies.

"This flies in the face of expectations," says Edmund Hodges-Kluck, assistant research scientist. "People just assumed that the disk of the Milky Way spins while this enormous reservoir of hot gas is stationary - but that is wrong. This hot gas reservoir is rotating as well, just not quite as fast as the disk."

The new NASA-funded research using the archival data obtained by XMM-Newton, a European Space Agency telescope, was recently published in the Astrophysical Journal. The study focuses on our galaxy's hot gaseous halo, which is several times larger than the Milky Way disk and composed of ionized plasma.

Because motion produces a shift in the wavelength of light, the U-M researchers measured such shifts around the sky using lines of very hot oxygen. What they found was groundbreaking: The line shifts measured by the researchers show that the galaxy's halo spins in the same direction as the disk of the Milky Way and at a similar speed--about 400,000 mph for the halo versus 540,000 mph for the disk.

"The rotation of the hot halo is an incredible clue to how the Milky Way formed," said Hodges Kluck. "It tells us that this hot atmosphere is the original source of a lot of the matter in the disk."

Scientists have long puzzled over why almost all galaxies, including the Milky Way, seem to lack most of the matter that they otherwise would expect to find. Astronomers believe that about 80% of the matter in the universe is the mysterious "dark matter" that, so far, can only be detected by its gravitational pull. But even most of the remaining 20% of "normal" matter is missing from galaxy disks. More recently, some of the "missing" matter has been discovered in the halo. The U-M researchers say that learning about the direction and speed of the spinning halo can help us learn both how the material got there in the first place, and the rate at which we expect the matter to settle into the galaxy.

"Now that we know about the rotation, theorists will begin to use this to learn how our Milky Way galaxy formed - and its eventual destiny," says Joel Bregman, a U-M LSA professor of astronomy.

"We can use this discovery to learn so much more - the rotation of this hot halo will be a big topic of future X-ray spectrographs," Bregman says.

The Daily Galaxy via University of Michigan

Milky Way's "Zombie" Zone --"Orbiting Dwarf Galaxies Completely Devoid of Hydrogen Gas"

Peering into the Milky Way's Past --Our Sun was a Late Bloomer (Weekend Feature)

Hubble Space Telescope Reveals "The Genesis Planet" --The Oldest Known Planet in the Milky Way (Today's Most Popular)

NASA's 'Dark Matter' Probe: "Our Milky Way Galaxy is Embedded Within a Vast Sphere of Black Holes" (Weekend Feature)

Enormous X-Shaped Structure Detected at Center of Our Milky Way Galaxy

astronomy

1469546097000

astronomy

%feed
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/28543855025/
Astronomers Discover Dizzying Spin of the Milky Way Galaxy's “Halo”

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:

Our Milky Way galaxy and its small companions are surrounded by a giant halo of million-degree gas (seen in blue in this artists' rendition) that is only visible to X-ray telescopes in space. University of Michigan astronomers discovered that this massive hot halo spins in the same direction as the Milky Way disk and at a comparable speed.

Read more: go.nasa.gov/29VgLdK

Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss/Ohio State/A Gupta et al

NASA image use policy.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA's mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA's accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency's mission.

Follow us on Twitter

Like us on Facebook

Find us on Instagram

astronomy

1469546087000

pin-gaia

%feed
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/354095589435601797/
Western furcula moth

Western furcula moth (Furcula occidentalis) collected in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: 04HBL003217; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=LCH217-04; BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:AAA8926)

pin-gaia

1469545928000

technology

%feed
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726094113.htm
Historical love-affair with indulgent foods
Our desire for indulgent meals may be over 500 years old. A new analysis of European and American paintings across five centuries shows that salt, bread, sausage, and shellfish were among the most commonly depicted foods in paintings of meals from 1500 to 2000 AD.
technology

1469545917000

pin-images

%feed
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/217650594471316341/
Digital art selected

Digital art selected for the Daily Inspiration #2447
pin-images

1469545916000

design

%feed
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/25-31-july-2016/5-things-design-firms-post-brexit/
5 things design firms should be doing after Brexit

With all the excitement about the referendum results and for half the country, disappointment, anger and frustration one thing is sure: we now live in interesting times, politically and economically. Nobody knows exactly what the eventual impact of the UK's decision to leave the EU will be but I can safely predict that there will be change, good and bad.

In the longer term UK design firms, like all UK businesses, will be affected by issues such as different trading arrangements and employment laws. But what about the shorter term? Some of you will benefit from increased international work if exchange rates continue to be preferential to overseas companies; others will suffer as clients hold fire on projects until the smoke clears and the UK economy has settled; all of you will face a much more competitive market as everyone fights harder for available projects. The well-run design businesses will survive; the poorly-run will go under.

Uncertainty always presents a challenge for business, so here are five things that we're advising design firms right now:

1. Focus immediately on your existing client relationships. They are the quickest, easiest, cheapest and best source of future business. Take a long, hard look at your firm's client relationship management policies and practices; every member of your firm, whatever their role, should now have “impeccable client service” in their job description and be equipped with the tools to deliver it. Increase the heat to maximum on satisfying, retaining and actively developing your current clients, and contact recent-but-dormant clients in person: a database-driven, auto-send newsletter or blog won't be enough.

2. Stop talking about your marketing and sales programme and do it. How's your strategy? Have you got a robust positioning, target market and proposition? If so, you need to articulate them clearly on every touchpoint, from your website's landing page to your email signatures. You need a rolling 12-month campaign plan with activities, dates and budgets, with the right people in place, in-house or outsourced. Are your activities as integrated, consistent, meaningful and powerful as they need to be, and how are your credentials meetings? Random tweets, online posts and digi-conversations are useful and fun but they're just the sprinkles on top of the icing on the cake.

3. Continue to invest in your team members at all levels of seniority. You hired the best: now give them the expert internal and external coaching and training they need. Without the right knowledge, skills and capabilities how can they support you in your business? If they aren't performing to their full potential, you've got a problem.

4. If you have periods of downtime, don't just sulk. Or panic. Or do nothing. Instead, use the opportunity to work on your business. Think. Then think again. As Einstein said: “We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Work with your senior team members on your vision, values, goals and business strategy, and then develop forward plans based on different “what if” scenarios. And be honest about your product is it good enough in terms of the three essential pillars of strategy, creativity and implementation? Are you not only keeping up with trends in clients' needs but staying ahead of them? Look at when you last reviewed and tightened up the operational side of your business, including finance, HR, IT, etc? They need to be running smoothly, bringing in results and providing value.

5. Don't give away your work for nothing. Yes, I'm talking about free pitches. More than ever, now's the time for UK design firms to stop providing unpaid strategic and creative thinking to prospects who can afford to pay for it. The sole exception is work done for charities or other not-for-profit causes that you support, in which case you're donating skills instead of money. Oh, and did I hear you thinking in point two that you can't afford a marketing programme? Try adding up how much time, effort and money you spent on free pitching in the last year. You could have used it on some proper marketing instead.

Finally, in case you're suffering from post-brexit anxiety, it's worth remembering that the UK has an extremely robust design sector. The Design Council's 2015 report The Design Economy shows that within the creative industries sector, itself growing at almost twice the rate of the UK economy, design is growing fastest. We generate over £70 billion gross value added a year, equivalent to more than 7% of the national total. And our trade body, the DBA, recently issued an uplifting post-referendum statement. Chief executive officer Deborah Dawton reminds us that design's proven ability to drive growth and the quality and effectiveness of our work remain unchanged she concludes: “The arguments for design are resounding.”

Shan Preddy is a design-sector trainer, business adviser and writer. Her firm, Preddy&Co, works with design firms and in-house design teams.

The post 5 things design firms should be doing after Brexit appeared first on Design Week.

design

1469545915000

pin-images

%feed
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/281543706285399/
Detail of the inside

Detail of the inside of a sunflower (© Peter Dennen/Aurora Photos) 2016-07-25 [www.bing.com/search]
pin-images

1469545914000

design

%feed
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/25-31-july-2016/product-design-exhibition-made-sheffield-will-showcase-regions-talent/
Product design exhibition Made in Sheffield will showcase region's talent

Exhibition Made in Sheffield has opened at the city's Millennium Gallery to showcase Sheffield's design talent.

Curated by Museums Sheffield, the exhibition celebrates over 150 Sheffield-born companies through a range of inventive and visually striking displays.

The main aim of the exhibition, according to Kirstie Hamilton, head of exhibitions and displays at Museums Sheffield, is to “showcase the region's most creative design talent, working at the forefront of manufacturing, engineering and technological industries.

“The displays cover a range of specialisms from global aeronautical engineering and world-class advanced manufacturing to ground-breaking digital industries and artisan makers who are masters of their craft.”

Some of the must-see exhibits on show are the world's fastest sled used by English motorcycle racer Guy Martin to break the world speed record for the fastest gravity powered sled, a GEM engine made by Rolls Royce used in Boeing aircrafts, 3D printed medical prosthetics and a skeletal hand made from ReproBone; an implantable synthetic bone graft which acts as a scaffold to support and promote bone repair before it eventually dissolves in the body.

“Over the next six months, we're turning the Millennium Gallery into a 21st century ‘Crystal Palace' to celebrate the incredible achievements of makers and manufacturers in the region,” says Kim Streets, chief executive at Museums Sheffield.

“Made in Sheffield will shine a spotlight on the diverse ideas, developments, products and progress that see makers and businesses in the city at the top of their field.”

The Made in Sheffield exhibition forms part of The Year of Making a city-wide initiative celebrating Sheffield's international reputation and is running between 6 July 2016 and 8 January 2017. Entry is free.

"World's — World's fastest sled made by Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Sheffield Hallam University

"Gem — Gem Aero Rolls Royce Engine used in Boeing aircraft

"Medical — Medical prosthetics -breast, eye, ear, nose by Fripp Design & Research

All photos © Museums Sheffield

The post Product design exhibition Made in Sheffield will showcase region's talent appeared first on Design Week.

design

1469545912000

design

%feed
https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/25-31-july-2016/aaardman-national-museums-scotland-launch-animated-educational-game/
Aardman and National Museums Scotland launch animated educational game

National Museums Scotland has teamed up with animation studio Aardman to create an educational animated game that draws on its existing biomedical collection.

GEN, which can be played online using a computer, smartphone or tablet, involves players diagnosing what is wrong with GEN Aaardman's digital creature character and nursing it back to full health.

The strategy game allows players to choose from various medical-related objects, ranging from wooden stethoscopes to early X-Ray machines, all of which can actually be found at the museum's science and technology galleries.

“Enhance museums' biomedical displays”

Laura Chilcott, senior digital producer at Aardman, says the partnership with National Museums Scotland “has been a great opportunity for us to use our skills both to educate a new audience, and also to enhance the museum's biomedical displays.”

One of the design features includes GEN itself. “It's a simplistic amorphous blob which has realistic physics applied to its body, so can be pulled and prodded around,” says Gav Strange, senior designer at Aardman.

“As the illness takes effect on it, we wanted the player to feel empathy towards our gelatinous friend, so they would care for GEN and work hard to diagnose its ailments and use the right treatment to bring it back to life.”

Balance between “clean and clinical”

Meanwhile, the interface has been designed to strike a balance between “clean and clinical”, according to Strange.

“We didn't want the interface and the design to feel cold, but at the same time we didn't want to add anything superfluous,” he says.

The design of the character acted as a balancing aid, Strange adds. While GEN has texture and an organic shape, the interface has been kept clean.

GEN's launch comes after the museum recently opened 10 new galleries dedicated to applied art, design, fashion, science and technology, as part of a £14.1 million renovation.

Introduce medical science to a wider audience

The app runs alongside 250 interactive displays at the museums, including a CT scan of a person that can be viewed from all angles showing different layers of muscle, gas and bone, and a game that allows users to design a clinical drug trial.

“[GEN] is one of a number of fun ways we're introducing some fairly complex ideas of medical science to a wider audience,” says Sarah Goggins, assistant curator for biomedicine at National Museums Scotland.

“We hope lots of people will get online to play…as well as getting an insight into some of the amazing objects now on show”.

National Museums Scotland looks after museums including the National Museum of Scotland, National Museum of Flight, National Museum of Rural Life and National War Museum.

The post Aardman and National Museums Scotland launch animated educational game appeared first on Design Week.

design

1469545910000

design

%feed
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jul/25/campaign-launches-to-reopen-alexandra-palace-theatre-shut-for-80-years
Campaign aims to reopen Alexandra Palace theatre shut for 80 years

The historic space opened in 1875 and although built to hold 3,000 will reopen as a multifunctional space for up to 1,300

An abandoned Victorian theatre hidden inside Alexandra Palace that has been closed to audiences for more than 80 years could soon reopen after a campaign was launched to restore it.

The existence of the “frozen in time” theatre is not widely known but it is considered one of the most architecturally significant and historic parts of the entertainment complex in north London, built in the 1870s as “the People's Palace”.

Continue reading...
design

1469545739000

culture

%feed
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nybooks/~3/asuUfPW-H4I/
Which Europe Now?

Political drama on television is finished. No fictional version could match the vicious infighting in both main political parties in Britain that followed the vote on June 23 by the British people to leave the European Union. What the vote revealed is a growing and dangerous divide between the political class, often a metropolitan elite, and a large number of people who feel left out of the economic prosperity centered on London and disenfranchised by “political correctness.”

culture

1469545737000

culture

%feed
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nybooks/~3/E21W3gocFVw/
Austria: The Lesson of the Far Right

On one side of the new conflict are those who advocate more openness: toward minorities at home and toward engagement with the world on the outside. On the other side we find the Le Pens, Farages, and Trumps: close the nation-state off by shutting borders and thereby, or so they promise, take back control; but also, preserve the traditional hierarchies that have come under threat on the inside.

culture

1469545528000

art

%feed
http://www.designboom.com/art/bruit-du-frigo-kinotour-wagon-cinema-07-26-2016/
bruit du frigo's kinotour wagon is a mobile cinema which captures everyday scenarios

the portable cinema allows one to see everyday situations as a succession of intertwined moments.

The post bruit du frigo's kinotour wagon is a mobile cinema which captures everyday scenarios appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

art

1469545526000

art

%feed
http://heptagram.co/post/147972472067
90377: by Lifan Zhang

90377:

by Lifan Zhang

art

1469545524000

art

%feed
http://www.designboom.com/art/rebecca-louise-law-chandran-gallery-the-beauty-of-decay-07-25-2016/
rebecca louise law suspends 8,000 flowers from san francisco gallery to show the beauty of decay

the installation presents an artistic study of the decline and succession of natural materials, as the stems overhead gradually shift through the natural stages of life and decay.

The post rebecca louise law suspends 8,000 flowers from san francisco gallery to show the beauty of decay appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

art

1469545522000

art

%feed
http://heptagram.co/post/147967634356
La Petite Mort #6
La Petite Mort #6:

HEY EVERYBODY! I'm excited to unveil a new publication I got to design called La Petite Mort. Please check out the link and hit the “Thumbs Up” button at the bottom if you like it!!!

They're available for FREE at Calliope NYC

art

1469545520000

art

%feed
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/jul/25/renaissance-art-nudity-cover-up-sistine-chapel-leonardo-censorship
The great art cover-up: Renaissance nudity still has power to shock

Sistine Chapel buttocks are veiled, while Leonardo's Leda was so saucy she was destroyed. But prudish censorship only confirms the pulling power of art

You never know what will offend people. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have discovered that a skirt was crudely painted over the naked Eve in a Renaissance manuscript soon to go on view at the city's Fitzwilliam Museum. Some time between the 16th and 18th centuries a particularly prudish owner had this image bowdlerised, even though the nudity of Adam and Eve is a venerable and respectable religious theme.

Related: The top 10 male nudes in art

Related: The top 10 female nudes in art

Continue reading...
art

1469545516000

art

%feed
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/25/wonder-materials-graphene-and-beyond-review-museum-of-science-and-industry
Wonder Materials: Graphene and Beyond review carbon foreplay with no climax

Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester
Faced with an invisible material and no whizzy inventions to show, this exhibition pays underwhelming homage to a Nobel prize-winning discovery

It's been hailed as the wonder material that will revolutionise everything from smartphones and car tyres to aeroplanes and condoms. But the problem with graphene, for the curators of a new exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry, is that you can't actually see it. And none of these potentially miraculous applications for the atom-thick material have actually been invented yet.

“There's never been so much expectation invested in a new material,” says Danielle Olsen, co-curator of Wonder Materials: Graphene and Beyond, which opened this week in the city where this mercurial form of super-thin carbon was first isolated in 2004. “It's under a lot of pressure to perform.”

Membership Event: Private view of Wonder Materials: Graphene and Beyond

Continue reading...
art

1469545078000

astronomy

%feed
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726094226.htm
Ancient eye in the sky
Light from a distant galaxy can be strongly bent by the gravitational influence of a foreground galaxy. That effect is called strong gravitational lensing. Normally a single galaxy is lensed at a time. The same foreground galaxy can in theory simultaneously lens multiple background galaxies. Although extremely rare, such a lens system offers a unique opportunity to probe the fundamental physics of galaxies and add to our understanding of cosmology. One such lens system has recently been discovered and the discovery was made not in an astronomer's office, but in a classroom. It has been dubbed the Eye of Horus, and this ancient eye in the sky may help us understand the history of the universe.
astronomy

1469545076000

astronomy

%feed
https://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/2016/jul/26/largest-ever-map-of-the-universe-points-to-mysterious-dark-energy
Largest ever map of the universe points to mysterious ‘dark energy'

The largest ever 3D map of the universe strengthens astronomers' belief that three quarters of the cosmos is made of an unknown substance: ‘dark energy'

It is hard to know whether it's a success or a failure but modern astronomy tells us that almost three quarters of the universe is in the form of an unknown substance called “dark energy”.

Add to this the “dark matter” that astronomers are still searching for without success, and we think we live in a Universe where only two percent of it is the familiar atoms that make up you and I, stars and planets.

Continue reading...
astronomy

1469545073000

astronomy

%feed
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160725151144.htm
Astronomers discover dizzying spin of the Milky Way galaxy's 'halo'
Astronomers have discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy's disk, which contains our stars, planets, gas, and dust. This new knowledge sheds light on how individual atoms have assembled into stars, planets, and galaxies like our own, and what the future holds for these galaxies.
astronomy

1469544925000

general

%feed
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.theregister.com%2Ffeed%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F2016%2F07%2F26%2Fsmithsonian_beer_boffins%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8
Calling all hipster... *hic* hip-hip-storians! Craft beer job spotted

Smithsonian on lookout for boozy history buff

Had enough of tech? Sporting a big or any kind of unlikely looking beard or interestingly dyed hair? El Reg has found the perfect new job where you'll get paid handsomely to espouse the wonders of trendy beer.…

general

loading...
one moment please