Tiny, tiny baby mouse. How cute.

When I say baby, what I really mean is embryo. This 18.5-day-old double transgenic mouse embryo (transgenic simply meaning that it contains genes from another species) was taken by Gloria Kwon and it won 1st place in the annual Nikon Small World photomicrography competition back in 2007.

photo by Gloria Kwon, copyright of Nikon Small World

The image was taken at 17x magnification. The green that you see is the in-tact yolk sac with green fluorescence  The rest of the embryo, including the placenta, have red fluorescence.

The image was taken using widefield microscopy with various lighting conditions under brightfield as well as green and red fluorescent filters in darkfield which enable her to show up details of the embryo that would be difficult to see or document otherwise.

The original Spirograph

During a recent trip to the Science Museum I happily found myself distracted from the 8 foot by 8 foot calculator in the Mathematics exhibition, by this:

Harmonograph at the Science Museum, London

...and it reminded me of an early blog post of mine about the maths of the spirograph. I had assumed that the spirograph was designed for the sole purpose of entertaining under 5s on rainy days and testing children’s patience with numerous snapped pencil leads. But no, it seems there was a scientific use at the beginning of it’s ancestral line...

Introducing, the harmonograph (ps. before we go any further i am not saying that the Spirograph is defs a direct descendent of the harmonograph, this is purely ill-informed speculation). 

The harmonograph was invented in the 1870s to analyse vibrations and was used in the study of sound. However, predictably, by the 1900s it was already regarded as a scientific toy for creating pretty patterns!

copyright Conor Lawless

The harmonograph works by utilising the swinging motion of two pendulums - one mounted to a pen and one to a drawing table - which swing at right angles to each other with the pen tracing out the resulting combinations of movement onto paper.

Weights can be added or moved up and down the pendulums to vary the speed that they swing at, creating varied patterns.

The Science Museum has a number of curve-drawing machines on show, like Stanley’s and George Adam’s geometric pens which arguably were the first spirographs, but with fancier cogs.

George Adams' Geometric pen at Science Museum, London

Stanley's geometric pen at Science Museum, London

There was also a surprisingly elaborate contraption on display masking as a tool for ornamental turning used on lathes - the geometric chuck.

Geometric chuck at Science Museum, London

This example, at the Science Museum, is the only known example of a 4-stage chuck for use on paper...and boy does it do good things to paper.

The chuck works by drawing the epicycloidal motion of each tier (determined by different sizes of cog) onto the paper at the top of the chuck. The motion of each tier can be superimposed upon another, or other tiers can be fixed so that the motion of only one tier is drawn.

So there we have it, an introductory tour of curve-drawing machines with very little science or maths and a lot of “it makes pretty things”. That’s what I like. But...if you do want some maths - the old Spirograph post has a bit to whet your appetite or you can go all-out with this article - which has some amazing examples and a bit of science behind their construction.

The Science Museum Mathematics exhibition is on the Second floor and is a permanent fixture (for now).

Visualising earth's tides

NASA's Scientific VIsualisation Studio produced this video demonstrating how the earths tides ebb and flow around the world. It doesn't include narration or annotation because, they explain, 'The goal was to use ocean flow data to create a simple, visceral experience'.



The visualisation shows ocean surface currents around the world during the period from June 2005 through Decmeber 2007 - these firgures are plotted into a computer that takes in shed loads of data and outputs pretty things like this - I love when computers do that. The computational model is called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II (ECCO2 for short).

It can calculate ocean flow at all depths but this particular video shows only surface flows. NASA describe it as a 'high resolution model of the global ocean and sea-ice. ECCO2 attempts to model the oceans and sea ice to increasingly accurate resolutions that begin to resolve ocean eddies and other narrow-current systems which transport heat and carbon in the oceans'.

The dark areas under the ocean rshow the the undersea bathymetry (basically the opposite of topography). The bathymetry and land topography are exaggerated to enhance the contrast - bathymetry by 20 times and topography by 40 times.

Details of the video:

Completed:	2011-04-08
Animators:	Greg Shirah (NASA/GSFC) (Lead)
	Horace Mitchell (NASA/GSFC)
Video Editor:	Victoria Weeks (HTSI)
Scientists:	Hong Zhang (UCLA)
	Dimitris Menemenlis (NASA/JPL CalTech)
Platforms/Sensors/Data Sets:	GTOPO30 Topography and Bathymetry
	Hipparcos/Tycho 2 Catalogue
	ECCO2 High Resolution Ocean and Sea Ice Model (06/2006 - 12/2007)
Series:	Flows

Chocolate skulls with walnut brains

Ruth and Sira García Trigueros are twin sister illustrators and graphic designers from the north of Spain. They are currently selling these handmade chocolate skulls with walnut or candy brains on etsy and they look delicious!

Ruth and Sira say that they "love the smell of damp earth, the mountains, the woods, walking around barefoot and eating directly from the saucepan. We listen to black metal. We are quiet. We smile a lot, sometimes people freak out. We play drums and bass in a band that doesn't exist". They seem cool.

The Theory of Everything

A friend shared this video with me recently, introducing me to Minute Physics and the awesome videos they produce. This one is an introduction to the hypothetical Theory of Everything - a theory I wrestled with in a quantum physics module last year - that links together all physical 'things' and predicts the outcome of any experiment that could be carried out, ever...in theory. Yeah, it's tough to summarise, that's where Minute Physics come in:

Mouse intestines on twitter

#Super resolution image of mouse intestine from @API_DeltaVision stained with #Phalloidin & #DAPI #microscopy #biology twitter.com/GECellBiology/…

— GE Cell Biology (@GECellBiology) February 20, 2012

Sciartist spotlight: Stephen Gaeta

I came across a series of creative prints over at the Street Anatomy store the other week and keep meaning to write about the artist, Stephen Gaeta. Stephen is a physician-scientist currently completing his internal medicine residency. After completing his phd dissertation on cardiac arrhythmia he said he wanted to "display his accomplishment without hanging a certificate on the wall". He therefore used the words of his dissertation in a print of a heart (similar to the print below) to display his achievement. From this, he continues to create typographical imagery from classic scientific masterpieces.

Click each image for a close-up.

Beat poetry

Text from the seminal 1809 work of cardiology Cases of the Organic Disease of the Heart, with Dissections and Some Remarks Intended to Point Out the Distinctive Symptoms of These Diseases, by John Collins Warren. In this work, Warren describes the symptoms of 11 of his patients with heart disease as they presented in his office and, later, on his dissecting table. 

Transgenic
Text from Chromosome 1 of the human genome.

Extraocular

Text from Zoonomia, the 1794 masterpiece of Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles), in which he attempted to catalog and explain human anatomy, pathology, and physiology, including the visual system.

Reactant
Text from the The Sceptical Chymist by Robert Boyle (1661), in which he provided the foundations of modern chemistry by proving that matter is comprised of individual atoms.