Drew Berry’s Animations of Unseeable Biology [TED Talk]
In 2011, Drew Berry’s animation of the role of breast stem cells won the Imagine Science Film Festival award for visual science (posted here). In this TED Talk, he explains how and why he and his team have put together these accurate representations of invisible cellular processes. The talk shows some examples of the animations, including a really great segment on mitosis and what is happening when spindle microtubules attach and contract.
For more excellent animations, visit the Walter and Elizabeth Hall Institute (WEHI) TV Channel: http://www.wehi.edu.au/education/wehitv/, or their YouTube channel.
The effective communication of Science is an Art.
Inspired for 2012 by these Young Scientists!
Set aside 17 minutes to listen to Lauren Hodge, Naomi Shah and Shree Bose give their TED Talk on their experiences as winners of the 2011 Google Global Science Fair. These three young scientists are each winners of their age groups (13-14, 15-16 and 17-18 respectively), with Shree winning the grand prize of a $50,000 scholarship and a trip to the Galapagos and an internship at CERN! Wow.
Of course Naomi and Lauren also picked up some great prizes and they all got the opportunity to present at TEDx Women:
If you have a great scientific question burning in your mind, why not enter this year’s competition? Head on over to the Google Science Fair 2012 website for all the information you could need. Here’s a quick video below.
Just remember to get it all in by April 1st!
Thanks to Julie Lemley for the link.
Meet Your Brain: Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
Professor Bruce Hood explores the human brain in this series of lectures from the Royal Institution in London. The trailer is below and in time all the lectures should appear on the RI Channel Website here (Vimeo channel here).
If you can access BBC iPlayer, you can keep up with the lectures here.
The theme of the 2010 Lecture series by Mark Miodownik was “Size Matters”, again relevant to the IB Biology course and available to watch in full from the RI Channel website.
UNICEF Photos of the Year 2011
Each year, UNICEF and GEO Magazine host a photography competition which aims to highlight the living conditions of children around the world. As teachers and students in the privileged setting of international schools and the IB World, we can be isolated from the realities of the lives of those around us. In many cases our schools and communities are oases of luxury, with poverty outside the school gates.
This photo, “Waste Export to Africa” by Kai Löffelbein, was this year’s winner. It links closely to my last post about the story of electronics. Do we ever really think about the final destination of our high-impact goods? In many places children are forced to work on piles of smashed-up and dangerous electronic goods, trying to recover precious metals and components.
"Waste Export to Africa" by Kai Löffelbein. Hosted at the Guardian (click for gallery)
For more photos of children’s situations around the world, visit the UNICEF Photo Essays page. They might inspire you to take your own photos or kick start some action in your own school. They also have a photo of the week page.
Hunting for the Higgs
Do you know what’s going on at the Large Hadron Collider right now? Let’s have a look in their canteen…
Or perhaps we’d better check out the news…
Find out more about the search for the Higgs boson (and what it all means) on this week’s Guardian Science Podcast.
Here’s an explanation of the Higgs field:
And this is where the Higgs field and the boson fit into the Standard Model:
World’s Fastest Cell Race
World Cell Race 2011 - click to go to the website.
Here’s a bit of fun, with an underlying serious purpose (the video is sped-up over 24 hours):
Find out more about the World Cell Race at the Nature News Blog or the World Cell Race website.
Video: Word Citation Tool to make life easier
On the final day of MoVember (please donate), here is a short Movember-themed tutorial video on how to make the citation manager in Word work for you. There are more tutorial and lab videos on my YouTube Channel.
Jetman Races Jets in the Alps
Yves ‘Jetman’ Rossy, the first man to cross the English Channel with a jetpack, races his jetpack and flies in formation with two jet planes over the Swiss alps. A neat little video and an excuse to test the VodPod Button to embed a Guardian video to WordPress.com. Read the main story on the Guardian website.
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Here’s another wingsuit video in Norway:
i-Biology 