prosthetic knowledge

HD Microscopic Zoomable Photo Of Weathered Euro Coin 

An interactive photo at New Scientist lets you intimately examine the wear and scratches of an average coin - by Sumit Paul-Choudhury:

The euro has taken a bit of a battering of late - and not just in the financial markets. As you can see for yourself above, the surface of a 1-cent coin, while smooth to the naked eye, is pitted and scarred when viewed through a powerful microscope.

To create this image, artist Martin John Callanan, a fellow at University College London based in the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art, worked with Ken Mingard, Petra Mildeova and Eric Bennett at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory in London. The team used an optical microscope to create images of the lowest-denomination coins used in Australia, Burma, Swaziland and Chile, as well as the transnational euro. They took standard coins that had been in circulation and left the microscope to make 4000 tiny exposures overnight. It then took three days of processing to stitch these images together to create each final, 400-million-pixel version …

The coin images are part of an ongoing series called The Fundamental Units in which Callanan explores “the atoms that shape the global economy”. Ultimately, the series will encompass all 166 of the world’s active currencies that use coins. The first five are on display as 1.2-by-1.2-metre prints, along with more of Callanan’s works, at the Galleria Horrach Moyà in Mallorca, Spain, until 17 January 2013.

You can explore the interactive photo over at New Scientist here

Insane in the Chromatophores 

Cypress Squid? Close examinations of the colour-changing skin of a Cephalopod, reacting to ‘Insane In The Membrane’ by Cypress Hill - video embedded below:

Via Backyard Brains:

During experiments on the giant axons of the Longfin Inshore Squid (loligo pealei) at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA; we were fascinated by the fast color-changing nature of the squid’s skin. Squids (like many other cephalopods) can quickly control pigmented cells called chromatophores to reflect light. The Longfin Inshore has 3 different chromatophore colors: Brown, Red, and Yellow. Each chromatophore has tiny muscles along the circumference of the cell that can contract to reveal the pigment underneath.

We tested our cockroach leg stimulus protocol on the squid’s chromatophores. We used a suction electrode to attach to the squid’s fin nerve, then connected the electrode to an iPod nano as our stimulator. The results were both interesting and beautiful. The video below is a view through an 8x microscope zoomed in on the dorsal side of the fin.

More Here

The Rosetta Disk

Long Now Foundation’s Rosetta Project have created a miniature archive featuring all of the world languages laser etched onto a small disc that can fit in your hand:

The Rosetta Disk is intended to be a durable archive of human languages, as well as an aesthetic object that suggests a journey of the imagination across culture and history. We have attempted to create a unique physical artifact which evokes the great diversity of human experience as well as the incredible variety of symbolic systems we have constructed to understand and communicate that experience.

The Disk surface shown here, meant to be a guide to the contents, is etched with a central image of the earth and a message written in eight major world languages: “Languages of the World: This is an archive of over 1,500 human languages assembled in the year 02008 C.E. Magnify 1,000 times to find over 13,000 pages of language documentation.” The text begins at eye-readable scale and spirals down to nano-scale. This tapered ring of languages is intended to maximize the number of people that will be able to read something immediately upon picking up the Disk, as well as implying the directions for using it—‘get a magnifier and there is more.’

… The pages are microscopically etched and then electroformed in solid nickel, a process that raises the text very slightly - about 100 nanometers - off of the surface of the disk. Each page is only 400 microns across - about the width of 5 human hairs - and can be read through a microscope at 650X as clearly as you would from print in a book. Individual pages are visible at a much lower magnification of 100X. The outer ring of text reads “Languages of the World” in eight major world languages.

Here is a video by Scott Oller about the Rosetta Project:

Rosetta from Scott Oller on Vimeo.

You can find out more about the project here

Airline Food by Signe Emma 

Electron-microscopy images of dissolved salt, birds-eye view. Salt is the important ingredient in airline food as taste alters in flight:

The blandness of airline food has an explanation.
Research shows that people lose their sense of taste when listening to the sort of ‘white noise’ heard inside an aircraft’s cabin.

White noise consists of a random collection of sounds at different frequencies and scientists have demonstrated that it is capable of diminishing the taste of salt.
At low-pressure conditions, higher taste and odour thresholds of flavourings are generally observed.
At 30.000 feet the cabin humidity drops by 15%, and the lowered air pressure forces bodily fluids upwards. With less humidity, people have less moisture in their throat, which slows the transport of odours to the brains smell and taste receptors. That means that if a meal should taste the same up in the air, as on ground it needs 30% of extra salt.

I have created a series of scanning electron micrographs of dissolved salt that appears to be a landscape viewed from an aeroplane in flight.

More Here

Inside Out 

Photographic images created from examining camera film ingested by Josh Lake and Luke Evans:

With fellow student Josh Lake, photographic 35mm film was eaten,
digested then excreted out in the dark.

The damage and traces left on the emulsion surface were examined
through a scanning electron microscope.

[Source]

The Art of Matthew Troy Mullins

Artist specializes in depicting areas and equipment of knowledge gathering, such as electron microscopes, typewriters and archives.

More of the artist’s work can be seen at his website here

A wood or heathland Ant, Formica fusca, holding a microchip

Taken from this collection of Electron Microscope photography

Anopheles gambiae (mosquito) heart (100X) by Jonas King

1st place winner of Nikon Small World competition 2010

Here is an alien-looking flea, and soap film.

White Russian

Part of a slideshow at The Telegraph (UK) of alcoholic drinks under the microscope.

(This one leads well to the next post …)

Vodka

Part of a slideshow at The Telegraph (UK) of alcoholic drinks under the microscope.

Rose Wine

Part of a slideshow at The Telegraph (UK) of alcoholic drinks under the microscope.

Champagne

Part of a slideshow at The Telegraph (UK) of alcoholic drinks under the microscope.

Algae and diatoms (10x) by Dr. Arlene Wechezak