%feed  
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/28533180206/  
NASA Team Begins Testing of a New-Fangled Optic  

NASA Goddard Photo and Video posted a photo:

It's an age-old astronomical truth: To resolve smaller and smaller physical details of distant celestial objects, scientists need larger and larger light-collecting mirrors. This challenge is not easily overcome given the high cost and impracticality of building and — in the case of space observatories — launching large-aperture telescopes.

However, a team of scientists and engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has begun testing a potentially more affordable alternative called the photon sieve. This new-fangled telescope optic could give scientists the resolution they need to see finer details still invisible with current observing tools a jump in resolution that could help answer a 50-year-old question about the physical processes heating the sun's million-degree corona.

Read more: go.nasa.gov/2abhanr

Credit: NASA/Goddard/W. Hrybyk

 
astronomy  

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/354095589435617171/  
Water scavenger beet  

Water scavenger beetle (Helophorus nitiduloides) collected in Fundy National Park, New Brunswick, Canada, and photographed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (sample ID: BIOUG13536-C09; specimen record: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_RecordView?processid=SSFDA2013-14; BIN: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:ACO4780)

 
pin-gaia  

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/281543706300688/  
A Eurasian coot rest  
A Eurasian coot resting on one leg in Derbyshire, England (© Andrew Parkinson/Minden Pictures) 2016-07-27 [www.bing.com/search]  
pin-images  

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/281543706293378/  
Tower Bridge in Lond  
Tower Bridge in London (© Mapics/Getty Images) 2016-07-26 [www.bing.com/search]  
pin-images  

%feed  
http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.mashable.com%2F%7Er%2FMashable%2F%7E3%2FduoMOvpEHZY%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8  
Newspapers plaster Bill Clinton on front pages after Hillary's nomination  

The day after Hillary Clinton became the first woman to receive the presidential nomination of a major U.S. political party, most newspapers led with the historic news. 

Most of them also led with a photo of Bill Clinton.

The dissonance between the news and the images was quickly met with critiques that even on a night in which a woman figuratively — and somewhat literally — broke through a glass ceiling, the coverage still had tinges of sexism.

The newspapers were in a tricky position since Hillary Clinton did not make a personal appearance on Tuesday night, opting to address the audience through a live video.  Read more...

More about Democratic Convention, Election 2016, Business, Media, and Newspapers  
cogdis  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160727103554.htm  
Astronomers uncover hidden stellar birthplace  
Astronomers have uncovered a hidden stellar birthplace in a nearby spiral galaxy, using a telescope in Chile. The results show that the speed of star formation in the center of the galaxy - and other galaxies like it - may be much higher than previously thought.  
astronomy  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160727103436.htm  
Did the LIGO gravitational waves originate from primordial black holes?  
Binary black holes recently discovered by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration could be primordial entities that formed just after the Big Bang, report Japanese astrophysicists. If further data support this observation, it could mark the first confirmed finding of a primordial black hole, guiding theories about the beginnings of the universe.  
astronomy  

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/gallery/2016/jul/27/astronomy-photographer-of-the-year-2016-shortlist-in-pictures  
Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016 shortlist - in pictures  

Gorgeous galaxies and stunning stars make up this selection of pictures from the shortlisted entries for this year's Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year award. The winners will be announced on 15 September, and an exhibition of the winning images will be will be displayed in a free exhibition at the Royal Observatory Greenwich's Astronomy Centre from 17 September

Continue reading...  
astronomy  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726123759.htm  
Better defining the signals left by as-yet-undefined dark matter at the LHC  
Physicists still don't exactly know what dark matter is. Indeed, they can only see its effect in the form of gravity. Now, the high energy physics community has developed a set of simplified models which retain the elegance of the traditional Effective Field Theories-style models yet provide a better description of the signals of dark matter.  
astronomy  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726123520.htm  
A famous supermassive black hole 'spied on' with the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS  
Novel observations by an international group of researchers with the CanariCam instrument on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS provide new information about magnetic fields around the active nucleus of the galaxy Cygnus A. This is the first time that polarimetric observations in the middle infrared region of the spectrum have been made of the nucleus of an active galaxy.  
astronomy  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726122841.htm  
Americans worried about using gene editing, brain chip implants and synthetic blood  
Many in the general public think scientific and technological innovations bring helpful change to society, but they are more concerned than excited when it comes to the potential use of emerging technologies to make people's minds sharper, their bodies stronger and healthier than ever before, according to a new survey. A majority of Americans would be 'very' or 'somewhat' worried about gene editing (68%); brain chips (69%); and synthetic blood (63%), while no more than half say they would be enthusiastic about each of these developments. While some people say they would be both enthusiastic and worried, overall, concern outpaces excitement.  
technology  

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726094824.htm  
Postcards provide link to Edwardian social media  
A new public searchable database provides access to a unique and inspirational treasure trove of amazing stories and pictures through what researchers term the 'social media' of the Edwardian era.   
technology  

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2016/jul/27/bikes-buses-bridges-boris-johnsons-biggest-design-blunders  
Bikes, buses and bridges: Boris Johnson's biggest design blunders  

As plans for the Garden Bridge teeter, behold Boris's most public design disasters, from Thomas Heatherwick's mobile sweatbox to an Olympic white elephant

It was the Kevlar-coated vanity project that could survive missiles of common sense fired from every direction. But the Garden Bridge's aura of invincibility looks as if it might finally be wearing off.

Related: HS2 and the garden bridge are vanity projects it's not too late to scrap both | Catherine Bennett

Related: Into Orbit: my dizzying drop down the world's biggest slide

Related: Growing pains: how will London house 1.5 million more people by 2030?

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design  

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http://99u.com/articles/54228/the-danger-of-making-a-backup-plan/  
The Danger of Making a Backup Plan  

Whatever your creative ambition is, you know it could fail. Tough, but true. Your book proposal might get rejected, your start-up might tank. Your client pitch might fall flat. That's an uncomfortable prospect for anyone, and a sensible antidote is often to make a backup plan. You tell yourself that if the book proposal flops, then you'll start applying for staff writer positions. Or if your start-up fails, then you'll take that job at your friend's company.

A backup plan is like an emotional safety net it's comforting and helps combat the fear of failure. And yet, ironically, the very act of devising this secondary plan could make it more likely that your primary goal will fail.

Business scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Pennsylvania advised recently that this adverse effect is most likely if your primary goal takes effort (which of course is true of most creative ambitions). The reason, as shown in their new paper in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, is that backup plans can sap our motivation. Fear of failure is actually a powerful driver toward success, and by ameliorating that anxiety, a backup plan makes it more likely you'll enter cruise mode, rather than forge ahead with single-minded ambition.

To test their theory that backup plans sap motivation, the researchers conducted four experiments involving hundreds of people who were asked to decipher scrambled sentences in a given timeframe. The rewards for success varied across the experiments and included a free snack or extra payment.

In each case, some of the participants were asked to devise a backup plan. For example, if the reward for success at the task was a free snack, the participants in the backup condition were asked to think about other ways they could obtain free food on campus.

The consistent finding was that participants who devised backup plans unscrambled fewer sentences. The purely mental act of coming up with other ways of obtaining the task reward meant that their performance suffered. Questionnaires administered to participants afterwards showed this wasn't because participants with a backup plan had been distracted, but because they felt less motivated.

One clarification  this new research is about backup plans that involve identifying a new goal if your primary goal fails (like applying for a staff position if your book proposal gets rejected). It isn't about identifying multiple means to achieve the same primary goal  for example, doing research to find as many agents as possible to whom to submit your proposal. Lots of research suggests that finding multiple strategies towards the same goal increases commitment and motivation.

Based on their findings, the researchers Jihae Shin and Katherine Milkman advised that “although making a backup plan has well-known benefits [such as reducing anxiety about the future…], it also has costs that should be weighed carefully”.

These new results lack a certain amount of realism  performance on an online word game is not equivalent to launching a new company or penning a novel. Nonetheless, the experiments support a compelling intuition  that by dousing your fear, a backup plan can also extinguish your burning passion. Logic suggests this is most likely to be a problem when your goal depends on dogged determination, much less so for “punts” the success of which depends much more on luck  in this latter case, backup plans are a shrewd idea with no apparent downside.

To make a plan B, or not to make a plan B?

The findings suggest that one way to decide is to weigh up whether your bigger concern for a particular goal is excessive anxiety or flagging motivation. Say you're terrified that your client pitch is going to bomb and the reason is not through lack of preparation  then it makes sense to have a backup plan in place (for example, you could make parallel plans to approach different clients). On the other hand, if your problem is one of motivation  you're struggling to switch off the football game and getting to work on your pitch it might well be better not to give yourself the comfort of a backup plan. In this case, thinking through a backup risks undermining your energy still further, giving you the perfect excuse to keep watching the game.

There is also a third way  make a habit of devising backup plans but do so mindful of the potential harm to your drive and focus. If you can offset the motivational drag of the backup plan, then you have the best of both worlds.

 
culture  

%feed  
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/nybooks/~3/5uDykNKVTFI/  
The Trump-Putin Fallacy  
Trump is not a foreign agent, controlled by Putin. He is a thoroughly American creation that poses an existential threat to American democracy. Now that Trump has become the Republican nominee—and has pulled even or even slightly ahead of Clinton in the most recent polls—it is time to force ourselves to imagine the unimaginable: Trump as elected president of the United States.  
culture  

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http://99u.com/articles/54208/martina-flor-an-introverts-approach-to-kicking-ass/  
Martina Flor: An Introvert's Approach to Kicking Ass  

When you speak to Martina Flor you'll immediately notice just how aw-shucks friendly she is. She'll never boast about her industry-leading lettering ability and is reluctant to go to into the sort of bold proclamations that “iconoclastic” creative minds tend to spout. But the soft-spoken Argentinian-native is the furthest thing from passive. Call it an introvert's approach to kicking ass.

Her well-established freelance lettering business is thriving and is the result of some super-aggressive career path (and world map) navigation as she bounced from in-house designer to agencies across two continents the same way she bounces around in conversation — quietly but unmistakably confident.

Whether it's going freelance or launching a fun side project, Flor dives in and hopes for the net to appear. And lately, it always does. In an era of over-the-top self-promotion and social media sniping, is there still space for the friendly woman that believes in the altruism of creative education? We spoke with the Berlin-based letterer on how she built an enviable career, one which mixes fun side projects, notable clients like Vanity Fair and HBO, and gaggle of 12,000 devoted students.

It seems like Instagram and Pinterest are just packed with letterers. Are we at peak lettering?

There's definitely a lettering boom and I can imagine why letterers might find it hard. Overall I find this opportunity and possibility of sharing things online amazing. I use these networks all the time in my creative work and they've influenced my work. I'm not against this “oversharing” era as I think it encourages a lot of people who tend to stay behind the scenes.

I don't have a judgement on whether any work should be out there or not, everything has the right to be out there. But we as designers, we need to be aware of why we think work is good or bad. We should know how to choose the right lettering, the ones that are good. That's one of the reasons I talk and lecture. I want to convey tools art directors can use to filter the sea of stuff that's out there.

It sounds like you believe it's a meritocracy, that the people with talent will get the work they deserve.

Sort of. There will be an audience that is not educated on design and typography. But there's another layer of a creative community that should be able to tell good from bad. If you know a little bit and you're educated, you can filter.

Have you ever seen work that wasn't up to snuff get a lot of social media attention? How did that affect you and is it discouraging?

I don't look at my competition that much and in those terms. It's not a good mindset to work while constantly thinking of other people stealing your clients. I'm grateful that I keep having work coming in and that I'm too busy on my own stuff. But it's true that this lettering boom has made it a bit over-worn. Again, that's why those of us who do lettering seriously have a responsibility to educate clients and art directors as to what is good lettering and what is not.

How do you judge your success?

It changes all of the time. I have weeks where I feel like nothing is moving, that I should be doing more side projects or a client project I did wasn't successful. I have other times when I leave the office where I think “that's the best thing I've ever done!” At the end of the day, what makes me happy is when I look at my body of work and see that I'm moving forward, when I see things I did in the past and think “I can do that much better.” I also try to revel in the little successes. I can change the curve of an “N” and that will make my day.

How did you make the leap to freelance?

It started when I worked for Levi's in Argentina and Uruguay, and I had to learn to speak to different audiences, people that will by the basic line versus the premier line. People who spoke different languages. The communication and strategies are things I apply all the time to my own brand. I was a designer or art director for a long time, and only focused on lettering six years ago.

What spurred the final decision?

After Levi's, I went to work for an agency as an art director and, on the side, I was doing illustration work for children's magazines. I was coming home at night and just doing illustrations until midnight, sleeping, and then going to work, every day. I was scared that I wouldn't have any clients if I went freelance. But in retrospect, most people who go freelance make a mistake hesitating. Just leap. After all, what client wants to work with someone at 12 at night as part of some side work? It's a pity I didn't take the chance to go freelance earlier.

How did you get your first clients?

An important part of that was telling the world I was only a lettering artist and only showing work related to that. It really made an impact, people said “Oh she's a letterer? I should only call her when I need lettering.” The message you give to the world comes back to you in terms of clients and work.

How long did it take for your income to reach full-time levels?

Between one and a half to two years. At the same time, I moved to Berlin which is a city where there is a big typographic community here. You live and breathe typography here. I think this community contributed a lot to motivate and inspire my work. I don't know if this would have worked anywhere else.

If you were to make a pie chart of your income what would it look like?

I'd say 80 percent comes from commercial client work and 20 percent from teaching. The side projects don't bring any money, in fact it's the opposite — I invest money in them. But they do contribute to me getting commercial work and they feed my portfolio. A lot of things I create for my side projects, I include in my portfolio and clients respond to that. If you don't feed your portfolio somehow then your clients will come after the old work and you'll start replicating yourself a lot.

There's a lot of people that love to debate whether it's okay to work for free, but it looks like you advocate doing that as long as it's for yourself.

I don't have this “never work for free” attitude. Sometimes I do commissions that don't pay well, but if you're interested in the job you can always find a way to make it a win-win for both sides. Maybe it's licensing or promotion. Money isn't the only way you can be paid. I don't like the mindset where people think “I will only take a job if I'm paid very well.” That puts you in the position to only get a certain type of job and you'll miss a lot of potential good pieces you could do.

I read you work 9 to 6 in the studio? Is that still true?

I always say I'm a freelancer that has a fixed full-time job in a studio. I like to have that space where I know that I can get certain things done. Though, I don't have such a clear line between my personal and work life. Sometimes I'm playing with my son and I think of a commission, or sometimes I am working and think of my son and go see him. I have a schedule, but I don't leave my studio and just forget about work. I live with what I do and it doesn't stress me.

How has becoming a parent in the past few months affected the way you approach your freelance routine? If at all?

With parenting or with career there's a lot of insecurities that come together. I enjoy being a parent, but I am sometimes afraid of what I'm missing for my job. I had to admit at times I was a little insecure and wondered if I could enjoy my work as I did before now that I had this wonderful child in my life. But things are starting to organize now, I think a lot of that had to do with my mindset. I really wanted to keep my career going. From my colleagues I got these questions like “Oh, so you're stopping your work for a while, right?” Which is not a question it's more of a “You know you should stop for a while, right?” I didn't feel like I should do that. Although I enjoy my baby so much, I had to struggle a bit to do it my way instead of following what I “should have” done. I have to say that ten months in, there's a structure I had before that has changed into one where I can parent and continue my career. But I had months when I thought, “How am I going to do this?”

Sounds like you love to jump into tough choices.

In my workshops there is often someone who comes with a bunch of plans before tackling something. “Oh I'm going to move this ‘A' to the right. Or this swish on the ‘S'” And I always just look at them and say “Just draw it!” I think this parallels my life: Draw it first and then see if it works.

 
culture  

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/27/silicon-nightmare-yuri-pattinson-ghostly-office-user-space-chisenhale-gallery  
Silicon nightmare: it's lonely work in Yuri Pattison's ghost office  

Lights flicker, shelves gather dust and cables twist like snakes all that's missing from this tech workspace are workers, leaving you feeling like a lab rat in a maze

Chisenhale Gallery in east London recently closed its doors and sent its staff on a five-week break. It has now reopened. But as what? Is Yuri Pattison's User, Space an office, a warehouse, temporary quarters or an art installation? Come to that, am I spectator or viewer; critic or user? Don't answer that.

A swanky new arrival desk stands in what's now called the “power lobby”. It looks like the same old power-free lobby to me, just made-over. Beyond, half-installed (or half-abandoned) warehouse and office paraphernalia fills the big gallery. Has some kind of tech company started up, then powered down? Where is everyone? Abducted by aliens, made redundant by a do-not-reply automated message? Maybe they've just moved on. Everything gets rebooted.

Related: Nothing to see here: the artist giving gallery staff a month off work

Looking down at a screen set into a table, I can only see myself from the rear. The camera is somewhere behind me

Should I Skype someone, send an email or tweet my isolation? A scream for help undoubtedly wouldn't do

Related: Where have all the art punks gone?

Continue reading...  
art  

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http://www.designboom.com/art/cantor-fine-art-emojis-07-27-2016/  
fine art emojis turn famous creatives into virtual visionaries  

cantor fine art has gallery has created more than a dozen digital portraits that blend emoticons with artists' portraits, their quirky personalities, and their most famous works.

The post fine art emojis turn famous creatives into virtual visionaries appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
art  

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/jul/27/the-keeper-new-york-museum-collecting-hoarding  
Hoarders or collectors? Our frightened society has forgotten the difference  

New York art show The Keeper celebrates our poetic obsession with objects, but how many of us simply surround ourselves with familiar, reassuring rubbish?

The US is a nation of compulsive collectors at least if responses to an exhibition at New York City's New Museum are anything to go by. The Keeper is a collection of collections, a survey of the collecting passion in art and beyond that finds room for everything from a menagerie of tiny whittled animals made by Levi Fisher Ames of Wisconsin to Vladimir Nabokov's collection of butterflies in three floors of stuff. All of which begs the question: what is the difference between artful collecting and mad hoarding? Or are they the same thing?

Just as intriguing are the collecting confessions of New York Times readers who replied to the paper's invitation to respond to the show. It turns out they collect everything from “vintage photos of men in rows” (pictures of lines of men, that is not images of men quarrelling), to a woman who keeps the contents of her vacuum cleaner, to people who lovingly curate novelty pens or coloured paperclips.

Related: Renting hell in New York City: how my hoarder landlady ruined my life

Related: Robert Rauschenberg: love and loss in America

Continue reading...  
art  

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/27/sophia-al-maria-video-artist-interview-islam-qatar-us-whitney-museum-black-friday  
Artist Sophia Al-Maria: 'People hate Islam, but they're titillated by it too'  

As her first solo show opens in New York, the Qatari-American artist talks about Gulf pop culture, gross veil fetishes and why she's not playing the ‘native informant'

Towards the end of Black Friday, the film that forms the centrepiece of her show at the Whitney in New York, Sophia Al-Maria tells the story of the time she and her sister were riding the escalators in a mall in Doha. She notices a guy she took algebra with in high school a few steps ahead of her, hanging out with a group of his own friends. She doesn't call out, because she knows he won't recognise her. She is wearing her abaya, her hair covered, and the guy from algebra is a US serviceman on his day off. The classroom they sat in together is more than 7,000 miles away in the Pacific Northwest. Rather than shatter the glass wall that keeps her two lives separate, she simply carries on shopping.

In the Gulf ​I'd have access to Indian, Chinese, European stuff. In the US, it was the same TLC song on repeat

Evil is born … not in the dark satanic mills of the 19th century but the bright fluorescent malls of the 21st

Much of the work was filmed with a drone in a yet-to-be-opened mall in Doha. 'It's a nightmare sermon. A bad trip'

Related: Women film-makers dominate Jarman award shortlist for 2016

Continue reading...  
art  

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http://www.designboom.com/art/micro-atelier-arquitectura-spinning-installation-07-27-2016/  
micro atelier de arquitectura e arte install gira spinning installation in porto  

the moving installation uses a swivel mechanism that allows users to rotate the structure manually once inside.

The post micro atelier de arquitectura e arte install gira spinning installation in porto appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
art  

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http://heptagram.co/post/148012175877  
La Petite Mort #6  
La Petite Mort #6:

heptagram:

HEY EVERYBODY! I just designed an issue of an awesome publication 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 in NYC

 
art  

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http://www.designboom.com/art/mathieu-tremblin-tag-clouds-graffiti-art-internet-font-07-26-2016/  
mathieu tremblin deciphers graffiti tags as legible letterforms  

on storefronts and walls across rennes, the french creative 'rewrites' local artists' tags as legible letters that would ordinarily appear on computer screens.

The post mathieu tremblin deciphers graffiti tags as legible letterforms appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
art  

%feed  
http://heptagram.co/post/148007457937  
La Petite Mort #6  
La Petite Mort #6:

HEY EVERYBODY! I just designed an issue of an awesome publication 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 in NYC

 
art  

%feed  
http://www.designboom.com/art/carmelo-battaglia-viaggio-nelle-citta-invisibili-di-roma-07-26-2016/  
carmelo battaglia's journey to the invisible cities of rome  

battaglia's immersive journey transports the viewer into the heart forgotten roman realities like the half-built skeleton of santiago calatrava's sport city.

The post carmelo battaglia's journey to the invisible cities of rome appeared first on designboom | architecture & design magazine.

 
art