Watching Europa

I'm pretty busy with another project at the moment but staying in touch with Culture at Work via the newsletter. Fiona Davies's work with silk fibre and red dye is amazing, as was the interesting presentation she made with Dr Peter Domachuk, whose work with silk biomedical implants is definitely something to watch in the future.

In the meantime, I can't resist sharing a new combination of art and science with you. Last year I discovered the ethereally haunting music of Peter Miller's Perpetual Ocean project, including a series of six one-hour compositions called Strangeness + Charm.

Peter has just started up a new project called Scribbletronics, and his first artwork in progress is the amazing Watching Europa. It's an imaginary exploration of the possibility of life in the oceans on Saturn's water-covered moon. Here's a thousand words to describe it:


Wow! (Okay, a thousand and one words.)

Belladonna

At the recent Artist and Scientist talk at Culture at Work, I met Beth Josey. She's a friend of a friend, a scientist who works in heart research and an artist. Her latest exhibition, at Hardware Gallery in Marrickville, Sydney, is great.

Stark black and white linocut prints of normally colourful subjects such as Easter lilies and redback spiders explore the counterintuitive relationship between beauty and toxicity. Really worth checking out.

Brain Art Unconference

Starting in two days is the first annual brain art exhibition and unconference in Sydney. Featured artist Julie Doye and other young artists will be exhibiting their brain art, while the unconference includes sessions on thinking, feeling, creating, loving and living with your brain.


Visit the website for more details, or visit the exhibition at Global Gallery, 5 Comber Street, Paddington.

How evolution (doesn't) work

Last night my son and I were discussing the fact that, in general, women seem to sleep more lightly than men and speculating that this might be an evolutionary development because women need to wake during the night to care for a baby. Max wondered whether that will change in the future, now that men – in some cases – take more responsibility for night-time child care (although biologically they still can't do all of it).

This led to a discussion about evolution, and how adaptations aren't necessarily the best possible way of dealing with a situation, but only the most successful way of surviving. And here's a case in point:

An article in Scientific American reports that researchers have found a protein in the brains of mice that inhibits long-term memory formation. This protein is also, apparently, found in humans. The researchers knocked out the gene for the protein in some mice and found that the knockout mice were smarter than their normal peers. (Sound familiar?) Note that the researchers are not sure about any possible negative side effects of knocking out this protein yet, so Charlie is still working in the bakery for now.

This raises a question: why would we evolve to produce a protein in our brain that makes us dumber? The answer is that evolution happens more or less at random, not with any intention to design the best possible human being. Of course, being smarter would be better for our survival, but being as smart as we are has worked well enough to be successful. Until now.

Algernon and Charlie's (fictional) experience notwithstanding, my next question is, where do I sign up to knock out my dumbing-down genes? As I get older, I need all the help with my memory that I can get.

Music in your genes

Here's an interesting combination of art and science: gene2music. Hear the rhythm of the gene sequence for Huntington's disease, or the song that allows E. coli to break through a bacterial membrane. Sheet music is also provided.

For those with a little musical knowledge, you can read a description of how it's done.

Thanks to Leslie Cannold for drawing my attention to this.

Floods at University of Queensland

The map below from nearmap.com shows the St Lucia campus of UQ, Brisbane, at the height of the recent floods. The Queensland Brain Institute is, fortunately, on higher ground than some of the recreation areas and older buildings on campus (you can spot the QBI just above the green sports field at the centre bottom of the map). Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the floods in Brisbane, and I encourage you to make a donation to the Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal if you want to show your support.


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Why has science failed?

"Why has science failed to banish belief in the supernatural?" That's the opening sentence of Dr Adam Hamlin's article, The Neurobiology of Religious Experience, in the new Australian Book of Atheism, edited by Warren Bonett (Scribe Publications, 2010).

The book is available from Warren's online bookstore, Embiggen Books, from the publisher Scribe Publications, or from selected bookstores around Australia. As well as Adam's contribution to the section on neuroscience, the book has chapters from noted public figures including Dr Leslie Cannold, Jane Caro, radio's Robyn Williams, Dr Philip Nitschke, Lyn Allison, Lee Rhiannon and many more, covering atheism and its effect on life, politics, education, society and philosophy.