Up late checking my sites I noticed this hot link on Neatorama. But they linked to National Geographic who sucked all the fun out of things! Goto Science Magzine's website for more pictures and mostly importantly: videos. I particularly liked Slide 8 on Möbius Transformations (The Wikipedia article is pretty heavy). Make sure to check out the visualization challenge winners of yesteryears (2006, 2005, 2004, 2003).

This type of visualization showcase just goes to show you how important the collaboration between artists and scientists really is. Take the first place winner for Informational Graphics: Modeling the Flight of a Bat (Brown University). What would you rather look at?

or

CFD Modeling of Bat Wing Flight (52mb AVI). Otherwise known as dopest shit ever. Animated stereoscopic virtual reality 3D visualization of bat flight data. Enough said!

Ah, welcome back The Office.

Edit: Now The Onion makes even more sense today!

If you watch hit TV show Lost, I have some bad news. You have been learning about Electromagnetism this whole time. Lost is a weekly physics lecture taught to us by the Dharma Initiative so I hope you haven't been skipping class this last season/term! If, by chance, you didn't actually notice you were enrolled in University of Dharma Initiative's E&M 101 then let me recap some material for the final exam. Keep in mind: Lost is a work of fiction and could potentially be writhing with pseudoscience.

Caution: Lost Spoilers Within, if you haven't watched all of the episodes thus far turn back now and save yourself from this forbidden knowledge!

Read the rest of this entry »

Extremely funny if you're familiar with QED

This is the first in a (weekly!) series of posts about interesting/creepy/crawly/mushy/furry/woody species I come across in my zoological hypertext travels.

As I'm sure you're aware, spiders are the bad-asses of the Arthropod world. They sit around in their nests and webs and eat insects like they're going out of style. Of the 40,000 species of spider, Tarantulas (Family Theraphosidae) are probably the most well known and feared. Most people in their right mind will not screw with a Tarantula, but the Species of the Week is not a person. Its a big fucking wasp.

Tarantula Hawk Wasps (Genus Pepsis) enjoy long flights on the beach, wildflowers, shopping for the latest aposematic fashions, and laying eggs in the bodies of paralyzed male Tarantulas. They make short work of unsuspecting Tarantulas by stinging and injecting them with powerful venom:

Tarantula's aren't the only thing Pepsis wasps sting. In fact, they have the #2 most painful sting in the world according to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Schmidt, on the experience of being stung by a Pepsis wasp:

Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath (if you get stung by one you might as well lie down and scream).

Ye-ouch! Anyway, once a Pepsis egg is laid in a paralyzed Tarantula's body it develops over time into a squirming larva. The larva will slowly eat the (still living!) Tarantula until it has sufficient nutrients with which to pupate, and become an adult.

Now if that isn't a gross life cycle, I don't know what is. I'm really quite glad I live nowhere near these things, cool as they are.

Hope you enjoyed Species of the Week #1! Next week: monkey + (cat x raccoon) + bee = ???

Oh no he didn't, another DJ set by yours truly? And it's about numbers? Hold on, where's all the science on Jacks of Science these days? You see, mathematics is so deeply rooted in nature that no self respecting Jack of Science could ever knock it. This mix is dedicated to all the mathematicians out there grindin', legally and illegally.

Download the numerical mix here(24mb) or stream it with this:

1. Sesame Street - Eight Beautiful Notes [0:00]
2. DJ Yoda - Paul Hardcastle - Nineteen // Spanky & Our Gang - 1-3-5-8 Jane [0:43]
3. DJ Shadow & Dan the Automator - Bombay 405 Miles // Michael Starbird - Counting Surprises [1:48]
4. The Go! Team - Feelgood By Numbers (Sampled with Beastie Boys - Three MC's and 1 DJ, Sesame Street - Six, LL Cool J - 4 3 2 1) [3:57]
5. Rufus Thomas - 6-3-8 (That's The Number to Play) [5:58]
6. Blackalicious - 4000 (Instrumental) [7:16]
7. Jay-Zeezer - 99 Luft Problems [7:46]
8. Harry Roche Constellation - Hawaii Five-O [10:00]
9. Jay-Z - 22 Two's [10:46]
10. White Rose Movement - Love Is a Number [12:44]
11. GZA - 4th Chamber (Instrumental) // Decemberists - 16 by 32 [14:10]
12. Dr. Octagon - 3000 // Dolly Parton - 9 to 5 [15:36]
13. Souls of Mischief - 93 Till Infinity (Instrumental) [17:17]
14. The Pointer Sisters - Pinball Number Count [18:12]
15. James Figurine - 55566688833 [18:43]
16. Smashing Pumpkins - Thirty-Three // Kraftwerk - Numbers [20:00]
17. Funki Porcini - 1,2,3,3,4 [21:39]
18. Lemon Jelly - Experiment Number Six [23:09]
19. Bob Dorough - Three Is A Magic Number [24:30]
20. Billy Idol - Sweet Sixteen (Sampled with Michael Starbird - Sizing Up Fibonacci Numbers) [25:42]

Above is my heart imaged on one of the good ol' 1.5T MRI's at Sunnybrook. It's one of the great perks of being a co-op student, you can take MRI breaks to help out researchers. The image is acquired in real time using a spiral pulse sequence. You can see the spirally imaging artifacts.

After all the humans become extinct due to wars of terror and global warming, who is going to carry the torch? Clearly robots. It's the dream all scientists are indirectly working towards (Citation Needed).

This week the mix is 100% robot themed. Appropriately so, it's mostly electronica, the music of machines. It also contains swear words. Holler at me to suggest a particular theme in the future or maybe some awesome robot tracks that I don't know about. Next week I'm thinking Optics Mix.

Download the robot parade here(28mb) or stream it with this:

For now, here's the playlist:

1. They Might Be Giants - Robot Parade (Layered with a little Forbidden Planet Soundtrack - Flurry of Dust (A Robot Approaches)
2. Rufus Thomas - Funky Robot (Introduced with Kid Koala - Robo Chacha)
3. Hexstatic - Robopop // Kraftwerk - The Robots
4. Ben Wa - Bad Robot
5. The Aquabats - Robot Theme Song
6. Daedelus - Astroboy
7. Boards of Canada - Music is Math // Music For Robots - Tone Tales From Tomorrow
8. Mos Def - Mathematics
9. Kraftwerk - Pocket Calculator // Styx - Mr Roboto
10. Daft Punk - Robot Rock
11. Boards of Canada - Nova Scotia Robots (Sampled with Monroe Calculator Company - Keys to the Seventies - 1265 & 1260)
12. DJ Yoda - Plays Computer Games
13. S.A. Smash - Robot
14. I am Robot and Proud - The Electricity In Your House Wants to Sing // The Police - Murder By Numbers
15. Telepopmusik - Mathematics //Darrell Stern and Bob Kaliban - Number Cruncher
16. Covox - Computer Love (Sampled with Monroe Calculator Company - Keys to the Seventies - 1265 & 1260)

Taxonomy, the scientific discipline concerned with the naming and classification of organisms, is quickly becoming a lost art. There is simply too much work and too few new taxonomists. It is ironic that a discipline that should have been super-charged by the Internet and modern molecular techniques has somehow instead begun to stagnate.

Doom-saying aside, in recent years a number of extremely high-quality taxonomic databases have appeared on the Internet. All of these are excellent for casually learning about the evolutionary histories of organisms you know and love (you want to do that, right?). For example, did you know that loons and penguins are very closely related? Thanks to the Internets, now you do!

Online Taxonomy Resources

Tree of Life Web Project

Wikispecies

The Encyclopedia of Life

Animal Diversity Web

Species 2000

Y. Whales are awesome, but as fellow mammals we are pretty awesome as well. So in an awesome fashion I mixed up a storm on the wheels of steel this evening and made this animal-themed downloadable 34 minute mp3 mix down. Some may be tempted to call it a podcast, but I can't make that commitment.

Since I have so much music, picking themes helps me narrow down my playlist selection a bit. My DJing philosophy is sort of like a genre-less stream of musical consciousness but if you had to peg it down I'd say this mix is a children's electronic dance mix, with bonus rap music.Download it here(28mb) or stream it with this:

For now, here's the playlist:

1. Lion King - Circle of Life // Massive Attack - Tear Drop (sampled with M83 - Birds, Dr. Michael Ghiselin - Darwin and Evolution Audiobook)
2. Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy // Savage Garden - The Animal Song (sampled with Naraus & Miranda - What Is An Animal?)
3. The Go! Team - Ladyflash (sampled with Power Records Ghostly Sounds - Mean Cat)
4. David Wilcox - Do The Bear Cat
5. Daz Dillinger - Vibe (Instrumental) // Sesame Street - A Cat Had A Birthday // Ratatat - Wildcat
6. Beastie Boys - Brass Monkey (sampled with Muppets - Mahna Mahna)
7. The Aquabats - Cat With 2 Heads!
8. The Other People Place - Moonlight Rendezvous (sampled with Dr. Michael Ghiselin - Darwin and Evolution Audiobook)
9. Lil Wayne and Juelz Santana - Birds Flyin' High (sampled with a bit of Beach Boys - Pet Sounds)
10. Ol' Dirty Bastard - Brooklyn Zoo (Clean Lord Digga Mix) // Ol' Dirty Bastard - Brooklyn Zoo (Instrumental) // Nelly Furtado - I'm Like a Bird // Snoop Dogg - Still A G Thang (Instrumental)
11. Sesame Street - A Bear Eats Bear Food // mu-Ziq - Whale Soup
12. Dr. Dre - Hustlers (Instrumental) // Shamu And His Crew - Doin' The Dolphin
13. Rufus Thomas - The Funky Bird
14. CunninLynguist - Halfanimal, Halfman
15. Gonzales - Love Scene // Manual - Frequency (sampled with Dr. Michael Ghiselin - Darwin and Evolution Audiobook, Wizard of Oz - Lions And Tigers and Bears)
16. Silver Jews - Animal Shapes // Wonderland Records - Yogi Bear and Boo Boo

I admit some parts of it didn't mix so hot but I'm new at this so cut me some slack. I realize it's pretty heavy on the childrens music, but that was just the case this time. Enjoy and don't forget to purchase music you enjoy.