Picture 1: wall mosaic on Darb-E Imam shrine (left) / atomic model of silver-aluminum quasicrystal (right). Picture 2: infographic from the Nobel Foundation.
This year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded to Dan Shechtman for his discovery of quasicrystals. Quasicrystals, unlike traditional crystals, are aperiodic on the atomic level. Basically, their patterns don’t repeat. When Shechtman first saw this in an experiment in 1982, this was scientific heresy. Crystals were periodic, period. Shechtman must have made a mistake. But he hadn’t, and rather than sitting around sulking about his doubtful colleagues, he worked hard to eliminate possible errors and build further evidence for the existence of quasicrystals. The tide of evidence turned in his favor, and the field of crystallography was changed forever.
In hindsight, quasicrystals are the sort of thing that seem to be too beautiful not to exist. (Which is not to say that, just because a theoretical structure is beautiful, it always turns out to exist—it doesn’t.) Although it took until 1982 to find evidence of atomic patterns that were not periodic, aperiodic tilings show up on the walls of mosques as early as the 12th century.
![science:
Multistable perception is what happens when you receive ambiguous sensory stimuli—the Necker cube and the Rubin face-vase illusion being two of the simplest examples—and the brain spontaneously alternates between two or more interpretations. This is interesting to scientists because it provides a way of distinguishing neural activity related to conscious perception with activity related to sensory stimulation. Simplified, it’s a way of distinguishing between “low-level” activity like basic visual processing and higher-level cognition, such as conscious interpretation and ultimately, building conscious models of the world. Recent research (pdf) suggests that…
multistable perception [is] the product of continuous interactions between ‘low- level’ (sensory) and ‘high-level’ (frontal and parietal) brain regions. There is now unequivocal evidence that fluctuations in neuronal population activity at both anatomically early and later stages of visual processing are strongly correlated with perception.
It also hints at the degree to which our conscious experience of the world is a constructive activity—the mental image of a lazy “Ego” that sits on a couch inside the brain passively receiving perceptions from outside is replaced with one in which the higher-level brain does not simply passively receive a model of the world from the senses, but takes an active role in shaping it. From the aforementioned overview:
Natural visual scenes contain many ambiguities and conflicts that usually go unnoticed because the brain effectively disambiguates the information received. In such a framework, multi-stable perception can be conceived of as a frequent re- evaluation of the current interpretation of the sensory input, which also occurs during normal vision but becomes particularly evident when ambiguities are maximised.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_llt7mjqWC11qzo4mso1_500.png)
Multistable perception is what happens when you receive ambiguous sensory stimuli—the Necker cube and the Rubin face-vase illusion being two of the simplest examples—and the brain spontaneously alternates between two or more interpretations. This is interesting to scientists because it provides a way of distinguishing neural activity related to conscious perception with activity related to sensory stimulation. Simplified, it’s a way of distinguishing between “low-level” activity like basic visual processing and higher-level cognition, such as conscious interpretation and ultimately, building conscious models of the world. Recent research (pdf) suggests that…
multistable perception [is] the product of continuous interactions between ‘low- level’ (sensory) and ‘high-level’ (frontal and parietal) brain regions. There is now unequivocal evidence that fluctuations in neuronal population activity at both anatomically early and later stages of visual processing are strongly correlated with perception.It also hints at the degree to which our conscious experience of the world is a constructive activity—the mental image of a lazy “Ego” that sits on a couch inside the brain passively receiving perceptions from outside is replaced with one in which the higher-level brain does not simply passively receive a model of the world from the senses, but takes an active role in shaping it. From the aforementioned overview:
Natural visual scenes contain many ambiguities and conflicts that usually go unnoticed because the brain effectively disambiguates the information received. In such a framework, multi-stable perception can be conceived of as a frequent re- evaluation of the current interpretation of the sensory input, which also occurs during normal vision but becomes particularly evident when ambiguities are maximised.
Has to be one of my favorite and greatest candid photos ever. Neither situation is what it seems and yet, my timing was impeccable on this one. Just hilarious. Especially the look on Dave’s face….
This interview made me so so so so happy.
(via Splitsider)
I covered film press junkets for years, and can tell you with absolute certainty that they’re never this funny. France… you’ve done it again!
I saw my backpack. Wait, let me back up. I’ve been looking for a backpack for a few months. The messenger pack style laptop bag I have right now isn’t big enough for my Mac, plus books, and the various other things I like to have on me at any given time. plus it’s rather difficult wearing those things while riding a bike. (Something I am also still looking for…) So I started looking around for a good sized pack, 1200-2000ci, with a suspended laptop sleeve.
My favorite so far is the Patagonia Chacabuco, http://bit.ly/kpSw2u, care of backcountry.com. Well built, great color, and the rightsize for anything I’ll need. Problem is, it is right about $90 plus shipping. Little pricey for my current financial situation.
Until one day I’m surfing my regular gear sites and I find it. Not the color I want, which is the vibrant “gecko”, but it’s black, grey and yellow, which i can handle. (Go Hawks!) Best part? It’s half price.
Here’s where the rant really comes to a head. I stall, I still needed some books for class and wanted to go back to my local store for another look over. Turns out this was a terrible idea. The next day I get back on, go through the check out, and BAM!, the pack is discontinued and all sold out. WTF! Why do I wait, it never does any good for me, always happens this way. Oh well, rant over, and I feel better. Looks like I get a few more days to find my backpack….
Aside from DNA’s famous double helix, this is probably the most beautiful molecular structure I’ve ever seen. It’s certainly got one of the coolest names: though it’s C60, exactly sixty carbon atoms arranged into a ball, it’s known as buckminsterfullerene, an homage to Buckminster Fuller, he of the geodesic dome. As if that wasn’t cool enough, C60 is the most massive and most complex object ever to have been demonstrated to show a wave-particle duality.
Wow, I’ve not been back to visit this in ages, aside from a few photos linked up through picplz. Small side rant, Instagram, if you are listening (though I know you are not) why do I not have a freaking android app? I love your app on my iPod touch but get nothing in return for my support of open market competition, help me out. Anyway, I’m about to take my final for the semester and I’m freaking a bit so I thought i’d let my mind run for a second. I’m not entirely sure what this blog is for, but I’ve been neglecting it and rather enjoy the freedom it allows me so I think I’ll put a little more effort in. Started out serious as if I had important things to say but really i think I”ll just have some fun with it. Ok, that was enough. On to this test…..
