A few nice Science images I found:
Eye on Science
Image by jurvetson
I just love this. My Hawk Eye macro got published in Science, thanks to Creative Commons licensing.
Prof. Fernald from Stanford wrote a fascinating article on a topic that has intrigued scientists for many years – how did divergent species converge in their evolution of eyes – what Darwin called an “organ of extreme perfection.” The physics of light have constrained solutions to collecting and focusing light to eight basic types of optics, seen in this chart (with imaging based on shadows on the left, refraction in the middle, and reflection on the right). Eyes have evolved independently at least 40 times.
Looking back, eyes matter. Image-forming eyes appeared in 6 of the 33 extant metazoan phyla, and these 6 now account for 96% of the known species.
It reminded me of my earlier flickr ramblings on the complexity of birds’ eyes, – with their wider color spectrum and multidimensional color space. Photographers should give a shout out of respect to dem birdies.
And how about the tadpoles rewiring their visual pathways when they become frogs and move from prey to predator.
While on the topic of being awestruck by biology, check out this video for a modern example… a graphic simulation of a white blood cell… starting in the bloodstream, then through the double layer cell wall, to uncover a “cirque du cell” of lipid transport proteins, DNA synthesis, and ribosomes assembling proteins from RNA code strings.
Science Project 1974
Image by The Rocketeer
In 8th Grade, I invented a safety feature for electrical outlets. It uses an attachable magnet that goes on the male plug (and stays on the plug when you unplug the appliance) and a magnetic reed switch inside the electrical outlet. The current doesn’t turn on inside the outlet until a magnetic field is present. That keeps kids with forks or knives poking into the outlet from being electrocuted.
I won 1st place in Physical Science at the school and the Regional Science Fair that year. I didn’t get to go to State because I was only in 8th Grade. If I had been a Freshman, I would have been invited to go to State competition.
My Dad commissioned a law firm in 1975 to do a patent search. They found in Argentina (U S Patent 3,868,160), someone had a similar invention that used a magnet and two others (No. 3,846,598 and No. 3,699,285) that used the ground prong to push the circuit into a closed state and one other (No. 3,596,019) that was just like my idea except it used a pin attachment on the plug to turn on the circuit in the outlet. Another similar invention was a power cable coupler (Patent 3,496,500) intended to be used in marine environments that had a sliding collar with a magnet in it that matched a reed switch inside the coupler housing and actuated it after the cable was plugged in and locked. I never saw those items on the market. The lawyer said otherwise it was a perfectly patentable idea.
Other ideas I’ve had but other people patented first:
Legos with batteries, wires, lights and motors inside and put together to form a circuit. I have a rejection letter from Samsonite (the owner of Lego products at the time). Now Lego is selling my idea.
Dental Floss Picks (I came up with this idea in the mid ’70′s too, but didn’t do anything with it)
GPS Enabled Polaroid Cameras (now Ricoh has announced a GPS Enabled Digital Camera)
Urinal Toy (pee on a sensor and get a high score)
I have a couple more ideas that I haven’t seen patented yet… but can’t afford the process of getting the patent! It is frustrating waiting too long and seeing your ideas make someone else money.
Are there any other frustrated inventors out there?
Wooden Sculpture of Science Genetics
Image by epSos.de
Free picture of a wooden sculpture about science, genetics and human creativity.
This figure of a playing boy is hand carved out of wood and is supposed to represent the understanding of the human genetics as we are about to discover the true nature of life by applying scientific research to biology and genetics.
This carving art looks so realistic that is is almost like a living child, if you look at it from a distance.
This foto was created in the university of Barcelona. The author of this sculpture is Professor Efraïm Rodriguez Cobos. See more of his work at efraimrodriguez.net
The original version of this sculpture had different colors. Maybe they were corrected to reflect the standardized colors that are used in Genetic Science.
