Van Gogh painting mirrors real atmospheric physics

September 18, 2024 Ellen Phiddian

(One of the teachers with whom I worked had a beautiful tattoo of this painting on her inner wrist. She said it gave her strength. I need to send this to her, as she tutors STEAM aside from classroom work, and this is her top favorite painting.)

Scientists have peered at Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night painting and discovered it displays a startling resemblance to real atmospheric turbulence.

To see stars, one needs clear skies. But just because we can’t see it, doesn’t mean there aren’t intricate patterns of air movement above us on a clear night.

A paper published in Physics of Fluids, suggests that van Gogh had an “intuitive” understanding of this while making his famous painting in 1889.

A Chinese and French team analysed the brush strokes in The Starry Night, aiming to see how similar they were to real atmospheric movements.

The masterpiece has been the subject of several atmospheric studies before, with contradictory conclusions, but the researchers say they’re the first to look at all of the painting’s whirls and eddies.

They looked at the 14 main swirls in the painting, and compared these with theories on energy and turbulent flows in the atmosphere.

“The scale of the paint strokes played a crucial role,” says author Associate Professor Yongxiang Huang, a researcher in fluid dynamics at Xiamen University, China.

“With a high-resolution digital picture, we were able to measure precisely the typical size of the brushstrokes and compare these to the scales expected from turbulence theories.”

Cropped and annotated sections of van gogh's the starry night — The authors measured the whirling brush strokes in van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” along with variances in brightness of the paint colours, to see how closely they reflected real atmospheric physics. There were several matches between the painting and fluid dynamics, suggesting van Gogh had an “intuitive” understanding of these concepts. Credit: Yinxiang Ma

As well as brush stroke size, the researchers also examined the “relative luminance” of paint colours used in the painting’s swirls.

They found that the picture aligned with a theory of turbulence called Kolmogorov’s Law, which predicts atmospheric movement based on measured inertia.

The changes in brightness reflect a process called Batchelor’s scaling, which describes how fluids diffuse at smaller scales.

“It reveals a deep and intuitive understanding of natural phenomena,” says Huang.

“Van Gogh’s precise representation of turbulence might be from studying the movement of clouds and the atmosphere or an innate sense of how to capture the dynamism of the sky.”

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/physics/van-gogh-starry-night-atmosphere/

Earth will have new “mini moon”, length of a bus, for 2 months

September 16, 2024 Evrim Yazgin Cosmos science journalist

An asteroid is approaching, but it won’t crash into Earth. Instead, it’ll be our planet’s little companion for 2 months before continuing on its merry way.

Asteroid approaching earth, computer artwork — Asteroid approaching Earth, computer artwork. Credit: SCIEPRO / Science Photo Library / Getty Images Plus.

2024 PT₅ is about 11m wide. The asteroid was discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in South Africa on 7 August.

In a study published in the journal Research Notes of the AAS, a pair of asteroid dynamics researchers calculated the asteroid’s size, speed and path. The researchers determined the asteroid would complete a single orbit around Earth over 53 days before being flung back into outer space.

The asteroid will start its orbit of Earth on 29 September. The bus-sized “mini moon” is scheduled to depart on 25 November.

Many asteroids follow a similar journey, falling into partial or full elliptical orbits around our planet as they pass by. One such “quasi-moon” is an asteroid discovered last year which astronomers believe has been orbiting Earth for more than 2,000 years.

Other quasi-moons make much briefer visits, like the 5m 2006 RH₁₂₀ which orbited Earth for about a year and 2020 CD₃ which was a mini companion of our planet for several years before leaving us in May 2020.

The researchers also believe they know from where 2024 PT₅ is joining us based on its trajectory.

“Such orbital elements are consistent with those of the Arjunas, a sparsely resonant population of small NEOs [near-Earth objects] in a secondary asteroid belt found surrounding the path followed by the Earth–Moon system,” they write.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/astronomy/mini-moon-asteroid-2-months/

One more-

Well, for now, anyway.

Parkinson’s Petrel-ABC’s Bird of the Week

Parkinson's Petrel

The clown doctor will see you now – and you’ll get better, quicker

September 9, 2024 Ellen Phiddian

(Back in the 80s I heard a story of Norman Cousins putting his apple juice in a specimen cup, then later taking a sip while listening to a visitor. I think of Norman Cousins when I see headlines like this one. I don’t believe he was a clown, but others’s mileage may vary, as to humor in the hospital, also Norman Cousins, not to mention clowns.)

Child looks suspiciously at medical clown in hospital — Credit: FatCamera / Getty Images

Medical clowns are known to have a positive therapeutic impact on kids in hospitals for a range of health issues, and now it’s been shown they can reduce the length of stay and antibiotic use for children with pneumonia.

A study, done on 51 children, found that those visited by medical clowns on average left hospital more than a day earlier than those who weren’t.

“Medical clowns undergo specific training to work in hospitals,” says Dr Karin Yaacoby-Bianu, a researcher at the Carmel Medical Centre and Israel Institute of Technology, Israel.

“They have been shown to reduce pain and alleviate stress and anxiety in children and their families during medical treatment, and have been gradually integrated into many aspects of hospital care.

“But their impact on children being treated for pneumonia has not been investigated.”

Yaacoby-Bianu presented her team’s research at the 2024 European Respiratory Society Congress.

“Community acquired pneumonia is one of the leading causes of hospitalisation in children, globally,” she says.

The team split 51 children, aged between 2 and 18, who had been hospitalised with pneumonia, into 2 groups.

They all received standard care, but one group also had four 15-minute visits from a medical clown from the Dream Doctors Project during their stays.

Photo of medical clown — Medical clown ‘tres jolie’. Credit: Dream Doctors/European Respiratory Society

The clowns did a variety of activities including music, singing, and guided imagination.

The group visited by clowns stayed in hospital for 43.5 hours on average, while the control group stayed in hospital for 70 hours on average.

Children visited by clowns needed an average of 2 days of IV antibiotic treatment, while the control group required 3. Other medical markers, like heart rate and inflammation, were lower in the clown group.

“While the practice of medical clowning is not a standardised interaction, we believe that it helps to alleviate stress and anxiety, improves psychological adjustment to the hospital environment and allows patients to better participate in treatment plans like adherence to oral antibiotics and fluids,” explains Yaacoby-Bianu.

“Laughter and humour may also have direct physiological benefits by lowering respiratory and heart rates, reducing air trapping, modulating hormones, and enhancing the immune function.”

Dr Stefan Unger, a paediatrician at the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People Edinburgh, UK, who wasn’t involved in the research, says the study shows the positive effect humour can have in healthcare. (snip-MORE)

https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/body-and-mind/medical-clowns-pneumonia/

How fast can a fruit fly walk – scientists built mini treadmills and found out

September 8, 2024 Evrim Yazgin

(I want to guess that it’s the same everywhere, and ask: did they put these treadmills on bananas?)

Fruit flies on treadmills are giving scientists insights into how insects walk in ways that previous, more invasive techniques could not.

Cartoon illustration of an imaginary fruit fly wearing sports apparel and running on a treadmill — Fruit fly on a treadmill. Illustration by Alice C. Gray.

Researchers want to understand how insects’ nervous systems respond to rapid changes underfoot. All animals must navigate potential hazards and changes in terrain, otherwise injury from falls would be likely (send this to your clumsy friend or relative).

Animals as diverse as flies, cockroaches, rats and humans all show similar ways of readjusting after a trip, for example.

Studying how insects adjust their walking will help scientists understand proprioception: how the body continually senses its articulation and movement.

These techniques have been helpful in evaluation and treatment of people, such as stroke patients, who have locomotive issues.

Fly on a treadmill — Graphical abstract. Credit: B G Pratt et al. Current Biology.

University of Washington researchers published in Current Biology their findings when fruit flies – Drosophila melanogaster – were put on specially-designed miniature treadmills.

Fruit flies are a good model for mapping neural locomotion control because they have a compact, fully mapped nervous system. Previous studies have also given scientists a suite of genetic tools to perform precise and specific manipulations of the fly’s nervous system.

Traditionally, researchers have studied insect locomotion either free walking or tethered.

Tethered insects have a small camera mounted on a stick attached to their backs. Unsurprisingly, this method is not the most comfortable for the insect, but an advantage of this approach is that it allows the fly’s movements on 3D surfaces to be studied.

“One disadvantage of studying locomotion in tethered flies is that their posture is constrained and normal ground reaction forces may be disrupted, which could affect walking kinematics,” the authors of the new study write.

Enter the Drosophila’s very own treadmill.

The researchers were able to track fly walking over long periods of time. Split-belt treadmills were used to investigate how the flies reacted to belts with different speeds on either side of the body.

Without the burden of a tethered camera, the flies were able to strut their stuff freely.

“At the extremes, flies on the treadmill were able to sustain walking at a max belt speed of 40 mm/s and surpassed an instantaneous walking velocity of 50 mm/s [about 0.18km/h], which is the fastest walking speed ever reported for Drosophila melanogaster,” the researchers say. (snip-MORE)

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/biology/fruit-flies-insect-walking-treadmill/

Monkeys give each other names too

This is so cool!

September 4, 2024 Evrim Yazgin

Marmosets do something that only humans, dolphins and elephants have been known to do: give each other names.

Two marmoset monkeys — Mother and daughter marmoset monkeys named Bhumi and Belle. Credit: David Omer’s Lab.

“Phee-calls” – a specific vocal call – used to identify and communicate between individual marmosets are described in new research published in the journal Science. Listen:

https://players.brightcove.net/5483960636001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6361433757112

There are 22 species of marmoset native to South America and occasionally spotted in Central America. The generally live in small family groups of 2 to 8 individuals.

The common marmoset weighs just a few hundred grams and is about 19cm tall. They are easily recognised by their large, white ear tuffs.

Naming other individuals is a highly advanced cognitive skill in social animals. Interestingly, our closest evolutionary relatives, non-human primates, have until now appeared to lack this ability.

Researchers uncovered the phee-calls in marmosets by recording their conversations.

They found that, not only do the little monkeys use phee-calls to address specific individuals, they are also able to tell when a call was directed at them and responded more accurately when it was.

“This discovery highlights the complexity of social communication among marmosets,” explains study lead and senior author David Omer from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “These calls are not just used for self-localisation, as previously thought – marmosets use these specific calls to label and address specific individuals.”

The researchers also noticed marmosets within a family group used similar vocal labels to address different individuals. Adult marmosets were even able to learn the names of individuals they weren’t related to by blood.

Such vocalisations may help marmosets in dense rainforest habitats where visibility is limited.

Baby marmoset monkey named Bareket. Credit: David Omer’s Lab.

“Marmosets live in small monogamous family groups and take care of their young together, much like humans do,” says Omer. “These similarities suggest that they faced comparable evolutionary social challenges to our early pre-linguistic ancestors, which might have led them to develop similar communicating methods.”

Understanding how social communication developed in marmosets could help explain human language evolution.

In the Spring edition of Cosmos Magazine, Drew Rooke looks at the prospects of talking to whales, and Amalyah Hart looks at insect consciousness. Out September 26.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/animals/marmoset-monkey-names/

3 for Science on Labor Day

so I guess you may read them tomorrow, if you like. 😎

First, a tiny, acrobatic bug:

Biologists have studied an extreme gymnast of the animal kingdom, watching as it moves so quickly it appears to all but vanish.

The globular springtail (Dicyrtomina minuta) is a small but mighty bug that can backflip more than 60 times higher and 100 times longer than its own body length.

This tiny bug grows to only a couple of millimetres and can’t sting, bite, or fly its way out of danger. Instead, its preferred method of avoiding predators is to flip out so forcefully it seems to disappear! (snip-More on the page, with photos)

Next, a possible source of new antibiotics (and this brought Ten Bears to my mind, for some reason):

A study has found promising antibiotic candidates inside bacteria harvested from the deep Arctic Sea.

The research, by Finnish and Norwegian researchers, is published in Frontiers in Microbiology.

Antibiotic discovery has slowed in recent decades, which has exacerbated the risks of antibiotic resistance.

Most licensed antibiotics – about 70% – have been derived from a type of soil-dwelling bacteria called actinobacteria.

“For example, members of the Streptomyces genus produce several secondary metabolites, including clinically useful antibiotics such as tetracyclines, aminoglycocides and macrolides,” says corresponding author Dr Päivi Tammela, a professor at the University of Helsinki, Finland.

But soil isn’t the only place these bacteria can be found.

“Marine actinobacteria found in the sea, on the seafloor, or within the microbiome of marine organisms, have received far less attention as possible sources of antibiotics,” says Tammela. (snip-More on the page)

Then, an analysis for coal phase-out in Asia:

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region account for 76% of the world’s thermal coal power generation, and many of these plants will need to retire early to meet global emissions targets.

But according to a new analysis, it’s possible to phase these coal plants out and transition to renewable energy while investors still make money.

The study, done by Australian, Singaporean and Chinese researchers, is published in Energy Policy.

“There is a drive and interest from a number of different investors like the Asian Development Bank, but also private sector investors, to finance the early retirement coal fired power plants,” lead author Professor Christoph Nedopil Wang, director of Griffith University’s Asia Institute, tells Cosmos.

Nedopil and colleagues looked specifically at 6 Chinese-sponsored coal-fired power plants in Vietnam and Pakistan.

“With investors wanting to invest in, and ideally also providing lower cost financing for, green projects, refinancing of these coal fired power plants becomes possible at a lower cost,” says Nedopil.

The researchers modelled the future performance of these stations under a variety of financing and geoeconomic scenarios.

“That brought us to the conclusion that, depending on the age of the coal-fired power plant, we can retire these plants earlier than currently envisaged, while reducing the financing cost and therefore increasing enterprise value,” says Nedopil. (snip-More on the page)

Science on Tuesday

Chalk-coated fabrics could make clothes even cooler

August 26, 2024 Ellen Phiddian

US researchers have developed a chalk-based coating that can reduce the temperature under fabric by roughly 5°C.

The researchers say their environmentally benign substance could be used to coat any type of fabric and turn it into a radiative cooling textile.

“We see a true cooling effect,” says Evan Patamia, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

“What is underneath the sample feels colder than standing in the shade.”

Patamia presented the team’s invention at the American Chemical Society’s 2024 Fall Meeting earlier this week.

Substances that can both reflect sunlight, and allow body heat to escape, are well-known to chemists. But they generally require costly or environmentally dangerous materials to make.

“Can we develop a textile coating that does the same thing using natural or environmentally benign materials?” summarises chemist Trisha Andrew, also at Amherst, of the work done by her and her colleagues.

Inspired by crushed limestone, which is used to cool buildings, the researchers tried solutions of calcium carbonate – the main component in limestone and chalk – as well as barium sulphate.

They used squares of fabric treated with a process called chemical vapour deposition, which added a layer of a carbon-based polymer onto the textiles.

When dipped in the solutions, the fabrics built up a chalky matte layer of crystals which could reflect UV and infrared light.

They tested the treated fabrics outside on a warm afternoon, and air underneath them was about 5°C cooler than the ambient temperature, and roughly 9°C cooler than air under untreated fabrics.

The coating is also resistant to laundry detergents.

“What makes our technique unique is that we can do this on nearly any commercially available fabric and turn it into something that can keep people cool,” says Patamia.

“Without any power input, we’re able to reduce how hot a person feels, which could be a valuable resource where people are struggling to stay cool in extremely hot environments.”

Andrew is now part of a startup aiming to test the process on larger bolts of fabric, to see if it can be scaled to industry.

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/chemistry/chalk-coating-fabric-cool/

Two for science on Monday!

Jelly plays Pong and gets better at with practice

August 25, 2024 Imma Perfetto

A hydrogel has learned to play the 1970s video game “Pong” and improved its ability to hit the ball by 10% with some practice.

Dr Hayashi, a biomedical engineer at the University of Reading in the UK, says: “Our research shows that even very simple materials can exhibit complex, adaptive behaviours typically associated with living systems or sophisticated AI.

“This opens up exciting possibilities for developing new types of ‘smart’ materials that can learn and adapt to their environment.”

The research is described in a paper published in Cell Reports Physical Science.

Video link, an example run of a hydrogel playing Pong.

https://players.brightcove.net/5483960636001/HJH3i8Guf_default/index.html?videoId=6360855643112

Credit: Cell Reports Physical Science/Strong et al.

What is a hydrogel?

A hydrogel, like gelatine or agar, is made of a 3D network of polymers that become jelly-like when water is added.

The hydrogel in this study is an “ionic electro-active polymer”, where the media surrounding the polymer matrix contains charged particles, in this case hydrogen ions.

As a result, it can deform when an electric current is applied to it.

Stimulation by an electric field causes the hydrogen ions migrate and, as they move, drag water molecules with them, causing areas to swell.

“The rate at which the hydrogel de-swells takes much longer than the time it takes for it to swell in the first place, meaning that the ions’ next motion is influenced by its previous motion, which is sort of like memory occurring,” says first author and University of Reading robotics engineer, Dr Vincent Strong.

“The continued rearrangement of ions within the hydrogel is based on previous rearrangements within the hydrogel, continuing back to when it was first made and had a homogeneous distribution of ions.”

It’s this property the researchers exploited to teach the hydrogel to play Pong.

How does a hydrogel play Pong? (snip-More on the page)

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Balloon carrying telescope at poles to spot exoplanets: get EXCITEd

August 23, 2024 Ellen Phiddian

NASA is about to launch a helium balloon carrying a telescope, to test its ability to see exoplanet atmospheres.

The Exoplanet Climate Infrared Telescope (EXCITE) is eventually destined to fly around the poles, collecting data above much of the Earth’s atmosphere, but its first test flight is due to happen from the USA in the next few months.

It will be launched for the first time from the Columbia Scientific Ballooning Facility in New Mexico.

Close up of excite telescope — EXCITE (EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope) hangs from a ceiling at the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility’s location in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The mission team practiced taking observations ahead of flight by looking out the hanger doors at night. Credit: NASA/Jeanette Kazmierczak

“EXCITE can give us a three-dimensional picture of a planet’s atmosphere and temperature by collecting data the whole time the world orbits its star,” says principal investigator Peter Nagler, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. (snip-More on the page)