Lake Baikal, located in the heart of Siberia, is the oldest and deepest freshwater lake in the world. For a short time in March, as the thick ice begins to melt, you can catch a glimpse of these incredible turquoise masses jutting out from the surface. buy zenegra online https://www.sanjeevanam.com/products/wp-content/languages/new/zenegra.html no prescription
Apparently, a combination of wind, temperature differences, frost and sun in the ice crust causes the ice hummocks to form.
The Anatomy plates above come from a French book published in 1745 by Gautier D’Agoty titled “Essai D’Anatomie.” The illustrations represent incredibly detailed head & neck anatomy that must certainly have been some of the best images of the time.
Joseph Duverny dissected the human cadavers and D’Agoty used the mezzotint method of engraving and printing to create the plates. The mezzotint technique is known for the luxurious quality of its tones and rich dark areas. They are beautiful, albeit macabre, representations of the human body.
The original copy of “Essai d’Anatomie” is currently a member of the Rudolph Matas Library at Tulane University. The images were restored, bound, and digitized by William Kitchens William Kitchens on May 6, 2008.
“Escape into Reality” is a Painting/Sculpture from Czech artist, Michael Trpák. It is made of cement, wood, and acrylic paint. In the description of his work, Michael tackles 2 of the biggest questions in the art world: What is Art & Why does Art Matter? I’ll let you read it for yourself:
“Escape into reality is a combination of a painting, a relief and a sculpture, it outlines a transition between real and virtual world, between 2d and 3d form, between sensed and tangible … Art tries to be new and discovering, so is an artist a scientist or an inventor? Modern art is a conceptual one and it can seldom defend itself, so does it make an artist a rhetorician or a philosopher? If art needs a form to convey an idea, should an artist be a skillful craftsman? If art is supposed to be digital, is an artist due to be an expert on information technologies? Is an artist a diplomat or a strategist who can present nothing like something and make the viewers believe in it? Who actually is still an artist and who is not? As long as an artist can be all and exercise anything, why everybody is not an artist? Will any object become a piece of art being exhibited in a gallery and will a person who places an object in a gallery become an artist? What is then the purpose of art? – To convey an idea or draw attention by means of a special, ingenious or more sophisticated form to things around us? Or should art be made use of as an aesthetical supplement and is more likely to be the design? If art is supposed to be another form of communication, does it need any commentary? Or – is art something what is useless and that´s why there are galleries to make it usable? As it is difficult to find a boundary between real and virtual, it is impossible to limit the art. I don´t know what a painting thinks about itself if it does think anything at all, nor I know if form is important for art. Supposing there is no form, energy, which can be turned into form, remains ……… Boundaries don´t exist……………”
To me, art is simply creativity, and in this broad sense, art is in all of us. While I don’t identify everyone as an “artist,” I believe we all have the capacity to make art. As Greek philosopher Aristophanes said in the 4th century B.C., “Let each man exercise the art he knows…” But how do you determine if art is “good”? Of course that is open to interpretation, but I personally appreciate art for its ability to inspire and make us think in a novel and exciting way, just as Michael Trpák has accomplished here.
Scientists have created a Brain-to-Brain interface that allows two different animals to pass neural information from one brain to the next without ever seeing each other. The study, published on February 28th in Scientific Reports, is the first of its kind. The internet has been going crazy about it so I thought I’d offer my two cents and try to explain in layman’s terms exactly what happened.
Who Conducted the Experiment?
The lab of Miguel Nicolelis from Duke University performed the experiment with some collaborators in Natal, Brazil. This lab was one of the first teams to study the restoration of movement for paraplegics through the use of Brain-to-Machine interfaces.
How Does the Experiment Work?
First of all, electrodes must be implanted in 2 different rats’ brains. It looks like this:
The electrodes record electrical activity from neurons in the brain in the form of spikes. These spikes represent information (thoughts) and their number and timing are recorded and then transmitted through those wires into a nearby computer. The computer then converts the spikes into a representation that can be stimulated into the second rat’s brain. The hope is that the pattern that is stimulated into the second brain will make the rat respond in the same way as the first rat. In more detail: The first rat is signaled by an LED light to either go Left or Right (you can see in the yellow circle above). The brain information from rat #1 is recorded and transferred to rat #2, and then he has to go in the same direction as the first rat, but without seeing an LED light to let him know which way to go. He can only know which way to go if he uses the information that is being pumped into his brain through the wires.
So really, it is a brain-to-computer-to-brain interface. Here’s a schematic of what I just described:
An important point of this experimental design is that the original rat (labeled “Encoder”) received a reward if the second rat (“Decoder”) could perform the task successfully. This means that the 1st rat could change its thoughts a little bit if the second rat was not working correctly, and this effectively trained the network to operate more effectively. buy benicar online blobuyinfo.com no prescription
One really cool thing about this study is that this all worked over very large distances. buy Glucophage online bloinfobuy.com no prescription
One rat was in a cage in Brazil while the other one was in America!
So How Do We Know it Worked?
The second rat was able to pick the right lever 70% of the time, a performance significantly better than chance, suggesting that the information was successfully transferred and understood. If the information wasn’t transferring properly, the performance would have been around 50%, meaning that the second rat had no idea which direction to go. You can see that graphically in the image below. The Encoder rat is the 1st rat and the Decoder rat is the second rat that is trying to use the first rat’s thoughts to complete the task.
Why Is This Brain-to-Brain Interface Important?
I have been pondering the implications of the study for the past week or so. Nicolelis pointed out that, in theory, such a system is not limited to a pair of brains, but instead could include a network of brains, which he named a “Brain-Net.” Researchers at Duke and at the ELS-IINN are now working on experiments to link multiple animals cooperatively to solve more complex behavioral tasks. “We cannot even predict what kinds of emergent properties would appear when animals begin interacting as part of a brain-net. In theory, you could imagine that a combination of brains could provide solutions that individual brains cannot achieve by themselves.” Such a connection might even mean that one animal would incorporate another’s sense of “self,” he said.
To me, this paper says that it’s possible to take information from one brain and pump it into another brain to assist the second brain to do something. I think to make this really useful, it will be necessary to record from many more neurons at a time to get a more accurate representation of the neural information. We also have to have a better understanding of how thoughts are encoded in those spikes so we really know what information we’re transferring.
Maybe one day we’ll see bees flying in formation or cows herding themselves… And when they find a way to translate this technology to humans, we could ultimately see some sort of telepathic communication in action. buy benzac online blobuyinfo.com no prescription
As if solving a Rubik’s Cube wasn’t hard enough, Ravi Fernando, from Stanford University, can solve a Rubik’s Cube while juggling! I can’t even really notice his subtle rotation of the blocks, but apparently he’s working at it the whole time. buy stendra online https://www.mabvi.org/wp-content/languages/en/stendra.html no prescription
Speed Painting is a little-known niche of the art world. However, this performance by D. Westry on the Anderson Cooper Show is fantastic! He has 1 minute and 30 seconds to impress the judges, and it looks to be off to a pretty disappointing start, but as with most activities, it’s all about the finish.
It’s interesting how our brain uses gravitational, up-down reference frames to process images. Here’s a few optical illusions of upside-down art:
“This reversible optical illusion image on an old matchbox also contains a sly joke. The Spanish word “El Cosaco” means a mounted policeman, but it also refers to an elite Russia cavalry corps, who were thought to be heavy drinkers, so “El Cosaco” means someone who drinks heavily.
When it’s reversed, of course “El Burro” means burro or mule in English, but it’s also someone who’s an ignorant or pompous ass.
