TED Tuesday: Animated cell

Medical animator David Bolinsky presents 3 minutes of stunning animation that show the bustling life inside a cell.

TED Tuesday: Visualising data and sound

JoAnn Kuchera-Morin demos the AlloSphere, a new way to see, hear and interpret scientific data. Dive into the brain, feel electron spin, hear the music of the elements ... and detect previously unseen patterns that could lead to new discoveries.

Evan Grant demonstrates the science and art of cymatics, a process for making soundwaves visible. Useful for analyzing complex sounds (like dolphin calls), it also makes complex and beautiful designs.

Have a spoooooky halloween!

Sunday Spotlight: Rockford's Rock Opera

A cute little dog called Rockford gets lost and ends up in the Land of Infinity. There he meets lot of fascinating creatures who, to his surprise, turn out to be the last one of each that has gone extinct from our planet! They sing and dance and tell Rockford the stories of their extinction. Sounds like a great way of teaching your kids about ecology, extinction and their role in preserving the nature? It definitely is!

Rockford’s rock opera is a unique adventure in sound for adults and children. With narration, sound effects, songs and videos, it's a totally new kind of musical experience. Its Facebook page describes it with words “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy meets The War of the Worlds, or Jungle Book meets Jurassic Park...” The members of this “musical experience” include Matthew Sweetapple, Steve Punt, Elaine Sweetapple and Jess Hodge along with others. Each one of them has contributed to this musical in their own capacities as producer, script writer, narrator, singer, voice-over for characters, illustrator to name only a few aspects. The first part of the story (52 minutes long) is available as mp3 audio for free download on their website. They also have a YouTube channel which lets you sample some of the animation videos that are part of this incredible story. I have listened to the audio book and watched the videos and cannot praise the creators of them enough. The music is catchy, lyrics are simple to understand and the animation is fascinating.

The first work of the Sweetapple label that I came across wasn’t the Opera at all. I saw their video Distant Generation on YouTube which was favourited by a friend and instantaneously fell in love with these folks. I then decided to dig a bit deeper and found a treasure trove of creative works in form of Rockford’s Rock Opera audio and video. Ever since then I have shared these works with people whenever I’ve gotten a chance. But I’ve always wanted to do a Sunday Spotlight on them and today seems to have been the fateful day. I am going to share the words directly from the website as I think they best describe the Opera and its purpose and scope.

Rockford's Rock Opera is an amazing adventure in sound for adults and children. Part One of the story (six chapters: 52 minutes) is free! It features narration, read along text, characters, sound effects and music and is available as a free mp3 download and an audio stream. Great to listen to on your computer, your ipod or burnt onto CD, this is a free audiobook like no other. The website also contains useful background information about the story (including key information and free downloadable teaching resources about extinction and ecology), how the story was made and the facts behind the fiction.
Once you've sampled the story, you can buy it as an unabridged book on compact disc, together with illustrations and animated digital videos. Rockford's Rock Opera
is more than an electronic book, it's a Musical Story about animals and an adventure about life on earth. It's an original tale about extinction, but it's also a story of hope. Created by Sweetapple and scripted by comedian and writer, Steve Punt, Rockford's Rock Opera’s book on CD is funny, thoughtful, magical and like nothing you'll ever have experienced before. Also, included are useful free Lesson Plans for teachers. Just press play to enjoy it online, click for Free Downloads - as an mp3 or iPod Story – then visit the shop to buy the specially enhanced discs that come with 24 page colour books, illustrations and videos. Truly a collectors’ audiobook on CD.
Much more than an adventure story, with animated videos, amazing sound effects and music, this is a children's talking book like no other, available in a variety of easy-to-enjoy formats. It's great for adults too and includes our own audiobook blog. Perfect for learning, great for storytelling in the classroom or for a wonderful, relaxing bedtime story treat, Rockford's Rock Opera is first in a new generation of best children's books. From the very young to older kids and adults, you'll never have heard anything like this before. Edutainment at its very best for parents, teachers and especially, children!

Rockford’s Rock Opera has received rave reviews from the likes of WWF, BBC radio, The Independent, The Observer and more. And the great news is it is coming on to the stage in 2010. That’s going to be fantabulous! So now learning about our ecosystem and our role in it is really all song and dance.

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• Some Interactive Story Sites (teachinglearnerswithmultipleneeds.blogspot.com)

Animation to the rescue

An excerpt from UCLA Today’s news item ‘Team's re-creation of ancient Karnak brings history of pharaohs to life’ reads, “The result of two years of painstaking research by a team of more than 24 scholars and technicians, Digital Karnak explores how scores of existing ruins may have originally looked and demonstrates how they came to be altered over time as generations of pharaohs put their stamp on the site that served as the religious center for Thebes, the Ancient Egyptian capital during the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.”

This is just one of the numerous examples of the use computer simulation, 3-d modelling and animation has in the scientific research today. These tools have afforded the scientists, from Egyptologists to space researchers, to transcend the barrier of space and time, albeit virtually, and aided the research tremendously. Based on the data already at hand, simulations and animations build a hypothetical image (be it a structure or a flight path) of what could have been or what could be. Having an image or action sequence running in front of one’s eyes is vastly helpful in the areas of research where the scientists haven’t had a chance to be in the place, time or situation they are studying.

Of course animation took its time to reach the sophisticated, 3-d, virtual reality stage that it is in today. The early humans “animated” simple day-to-day scenes by painting a sequence of actions on a vessel which one simply turned to see the “animation”. I’m sure you still remember the ‘flip-books’ when you were in school, pages of which had to be rapidly flipped in order to see a Cricketer play a shot or a soccer player score a goal. That was animation in its good ol’ 2-d form. Even today 2-d animation is useful for simulating the history of World War II or the spread of various religions across the globe. Of course if you are trying to simulate the threat of all the space-junk that orbits around the Earth to a space craft, you need much advanced, 3-d, virtual reality sort of animations.

However, simulations and animations are used mostly for entertainment purpose in our society. Most of it is aimed towards the computer and video games that have zero intellectual-stimulation and high violence-stimulation quotient for the brain. Very few but sensible people use these wonderful tools for edutainment. Someone like Matthew Sweetapple and his Rockford’s Rock Opera tries to educate the children about sustainability and our responsibility towards this planet. Others like the What the bleep?!? team give the viewers some food for thought about whether we really know what we think we know.

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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s SPACE-JUNK!

[Source: National Geographic website, artist's conception of space-junk floating around Earth.]

A privately owned U.S. Iridium satellite collided with the Russian military's defunct Cosmos 2251 satellite over northern Siberia on Tuesday just before noon, US Eastern Time. The two satellites were travelling at about six miles (ten kilometres) a second when they collided. This collision added more than 500 bits of debris to the roughly 18,000 pieces of known space junk orbiting Earth already. A video on New Scientist’s YT channel shares a simulation made by Analytical Graphics that shows the possible path of the new debris around Earth amongst the existing ones.

According to the article on National Geographic’s (NatGeo) website, most of the larger debris is kept track of by various space agencies but some smaller ones that are not tracked can be equally threatening doe to their high velocity. The write up on the New Scientist website concerns the possibility of predicting such collisions and, therefore, avoiding them. On a lighter note, Wired Science shares a list of some weird space-junk items left behind. Although the danger to the International Space Station caused by floating debris of the latest collision is minimal, it has sparked a discussion and review of whether we are overcrowding the space around our planet.

I, therefore, thought of sharing another article on NatGeo’s website that gives a nice overview of the space-race that the mankind is engaged in. This overview tells us that, “There are 8000 artificial objects orbiting Earth. More than 2,500 of these are satellites, working and dead. The remaining objects are space-junk (technically known as orbital debris).” This page also has an interactive feature that gives information about the types of satellites and details of some notable satellites such as Hubble telescope, Voyager space probes etc.

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Maps of War

This is going to be a quick little blog entry about another interesting website I came across that deals with maps. The creator of the website and the maps, who chooses to remain anonymous, is a Flash-Designer hobbyist and professional history-buff. The website bears the name ‘Maps of War’ and anyone who visits it will agree that much thought and effort has been put into researching the information and making the flash animations. And the best part is the creator of this website not juts allows but encourages you to share and use his work anywhere you like for free! According to the ‘About’ section of the website, “Maps-of-War was established in September of 2006. The site was created to help people understand current events, as seen on TV and in our newspaper headlines, as being one small chapter in the much bigger and longer story of human history.”

Out of all the map-animations my personal favourites are ‘March of democracy’ and ‘History of religion’. As their names make it clear, these maps are informative tools depicting the history of democracy and religion, respectively, throughout the world from the earliest known events of their origin to present day. Besides the maps, the website also has a collection of links that lead to some more interesting historical facts. These include statistics of violence in Iraq and Darfur, map-animations showing step-by-step history of World War II and a map depicting flow of migrants across the world, among other informative material. So go check it out and have fun learning about history!

Are there more dimensions?

So I am sharing a YT video on my blog after a while today. I'd probably end up writing a separate blog entry about this whole documentary, What the bleep do we know!?, someday. But that's going to take some time because this is no ordinary doco. It makes you think.....of course, only if you are ready to think of science and philosophy as two sides of a coin and not as ideologies that will never mix.

Anyways, what I wanted to particularly share about this video was the Dr. Quantum video which starts at 03:55 in this clip. I think this bit is very cleverly made for people who can understand its "hidden" message, who do want to think "out of the box", literally and figuratively. Like the small circle in the Flatland doesn't believe in the existence of any more dimensions till she bumps into Dr. Quantum, similarly it made me think that why can't we take this analogy further and talk about our own world? (And I think that is the purpose of this animation.) We live in a 3d world (and if you consider time as a dimension, in a 4d world).....but couldn't there be more dimensions of which we will never think of unless we experience them? I'd say there are.......

Readers who are well-acquainted with philosophical and/or metaphysical literature will very readily agree that there is a belief that there are "beings" from higher dimensions (sometimes called 'angels') whom not everyone can experience. I do not have such experience till now but this animation here just got me thinking.....................

World’s first animation!

Iran's 'Burnt City', called Shahr-e-Sookhteh, sits on the banks of the Helmand river along the Zahedan-Zabol road in the southeast province of Sistan va Baluchestan. A Bronze Age archaeological treasure trove, it was one of the world's largest communities about 4800 years ago, at the dawn of urban settlement. Based on more than 3 decades of excavation and analysis by the Iranian archaeologists, the city was built around 3200 BC, covering an area of 151 hectares, and abandoned over a millennium later in 2100 BC. The city experienced four stages of civilization and was burnt down three times. It took its eventual name because it was never rebuilt after the last fire.

This archaeological find is especially made interesting by the discoveries such as the oldest game of backgammon, metallurgical finds, world’s earliest artificial eyeball, human skulls showing signs of brain surgery, only to name a few. Information about each of these can be found online as well as in documents for those interested. However, the artifact that I found most interesting is an earthen goblet, with a diameter of 8 cm and height of 10 cm, which can be classified as “world’s oldest animation”. The images painted around the outer surface of the goblet, when it is turned around, portray a goat that jumps towards a tree and eats its leaves!!! The archaeologists have managed to make an animated piece on the basis of these images in the form of a 20-second film. This film is available for download. The images show movement in an intricate way that is an unprecedented discovery.

Message from the Universe

A song by Matthew Sweetapple and his band everyone should listen to very carefully and a video everyone should watch.....and learn from them.