A reblog of nerdy and quirky stuff that pique my interest.
291 posts
Latest Posts by philosophical-amoeba - Page 6
The math trick that college will never teach you! : Parametric Integration
Parametric integration is one such technique that once you are made aware of it, you will never for the love of god forget it. It goes by many names : ‘Differentiation under the Integral sign’, ‘Feynman’s famous trick’ , ‘Parametric Integration’ and so on.
Let me demonstrate :
Now this integral might seem familiar to you if you have taken a calculus course before and to evaluate it is rather simple as well.
Knowing this you can do lots of crazy stuff. Lets differentiate this expression wrt to the parameter in the integral – s (Hence the name parametric integration ). i.e
Look at that, by simple differentiation we have obtained the expression for another integral. How cool is that! It gets even better.
Lets differentiate it once more:
.
.
.
If you keep on differentiating the expression n times, one gets this :
Now substituting the value of s to be 1, we obtain the following integral expression for the factorial. This is known as the gamma function.
There are lots of ways to derive the above expression for the gamma function, but parametric integration is in my opinion the most subtle way to arrive at it. :D
This is a really powerful technique and I strong suggest that if you have taken calculus, then please do read this article.
Have a great day!
EDIT: It had to be gamma(n+1) not gamma(n) .Thank you @mattchelldavis
Hearing with your eyes – A Western style of speech perception
Which parts of a person’s face do you look at when you listen them speak? Lip movements affect the perception of voice information from the ears when listening to someone speak, but native Japanese speakers are mostly unaffected by that part of the face. Recent research from Japan has revealed a clear difference in the brain network activation between two groups of people, native English speakers and native Japanese speakers, during face-to-face vocal communication.
It is known that visual speech information, such as lip movement, affects the perception of voice information from the ears when speaking to someone face-to-face. For example, lip movement can help a person to hear better under noisy conditions. On the contrary, dubbed movie content, where the lip movement conflicts with a speaker’s voice, gives a listener the illusion of hearing another sound. This illusion is called the “McGurk effect.”
According to an analysis of previous behavioral studies, native Japanese speakers are not influenced by visual lip movements as much as native English speakers. To examine this phenomenon further, researchers from Kumamoto University measured and analyzed gaze patterns, brain waves, and reaction times for speech identification between two groups of 20 native Japanese speakers and 20 native English speakers.
The difference was clear. When natural speech is paired with lip movement, native English speakers focus their gaze on a speaker’s lips before the emergence of any sound. The gaze of native Japanese speakers, however, is not as fixed. Furthermore, native English speakers were able to understand speech faster by combining the audio and visual cues, whereas native Japanese speakers showed delayed speech understanding when lip motion was in view.
“Native English speakers attempt to narrow down candidates for incoming sounds by using information from the lips which start moving a few hundreds of milliseconds before vocalizations begin. Native Japanese speakers, on the other hand, place their emphasis only on hearing, and visual information seems to require extra processing,” explained Kumamoto University’s Professor Kaoru Sekiyama, who lead the research.
Kumamoto University researchers then teamed up with researchers from Sapporo Medical University and Japan’s Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) to measure and analyze brain activation patterns using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Their goal was to elucidate differences in brain activity between the two languages.
The functional connectivity in the brain between the area that deals with hearing and the area that deals with visual motion information, the primary auditory and middle temporal areas respectively, was stronger in native English speakers than in native Japanese speakers. This result strongly suggests that auditory and visual information are associated with each other at an early stage of information processing in an English speaker’s brain, whereas the association is made at a later stage in a Japanese speaker’s brain. The functional connectivity between auditory and visual information, and the manner in which the two types of information are processed together was shown to be clearly different between the two different language speakers.
“It has been said that video materials produce better results when studying a foreign language. However, it has also been reported that video materials do not have a very positive effect for native Japanese speakers,” said Professor Sekiyama. “It may be that there are unique ways in which Japanese people process audio information, which are related to what we have shown in our recent research, that are behind this phenomenon.”
These findings were published in the journal “Scientific Reports” on August 11th and October 13th, 2016.
The day my sister, Jessica, discovered Comic Sans, her entire world changed. She’s dyslexic and struggled through school until she was finally diagnosed in her early twenties, enabling her to build up a personal set of tools for navigating the written world. “For me, being able to use Comic Sans is similar to a mobility aid, or a visual aid, or a hearing aid,” she tells me while we’re both visiting our family in Maryland. “I have other ways of writing and reading, but they’re not like they are for someone who’s not dyslexic.” The irregular shapes of the letters in Comic Sans allow her to focus on the individual parts of words. While many fonts use repeated shapes to create different letters, such as a “p” rotated to made a “q,” Comic Sans uses few repeated shapes, creating distinct letters (although it does have a mirrored “b” and “d”). Comic Sans is one of a few typefaces recommended by influential organizations like the British Dyslexia Association and the Dyslexia Association of Ireland. Using Comic Sans has made it possible for Jessica to complete a rigorous program in marine zoology at Bangor University in Wales. […] I asked Jessica to tell me what she’s up against. She’s been told that Comic Sans is “unprofessional. That it’s juvenile. That it’s stupid. That it basically shouldn’t be used for anything at all, unless it is a comic.” There are fonts that have been specifically created for people with dyslexia, all of which lack the clean minimalism or elegant balance and perfect kerning favored by typography snobs. But they are crucial disability aids. Some are free, such as Lexie Readable (which calls itself “Comic Sans for grown-ups”), Open-Dyslexic, and Dyslexie. Others are for purchase or are publisher-owned and unavailable to the general public. But for Jessica, Comic Sans is still the best. “I don’t use Open Dyslexic because it’s not as easy for me to read,” Jessica says. “It’s not my font. I was dyslexic before Open Dyslexic happened. My mind has been getting used to Comic Sans.” Not everyone with dyslexia uses Comic Sans to help them read and write. “Other people with dyslexia find that having colored paper makes it easier,” Jessica says. “Or some people find Arial easier.” Comic Sans and Arial are readily available because they are included by default in many operating systems and word-processing programs, and they are web-safe fonts.
Hating Comic Sans is Ableist by Lauren Hudgins on The Establishment. (via allthingslinguistic)
The alleged lexical extravagance of the Eskimos comports so well with the many other facets of their polysynthetic perversity: rubbing noses; lending their wives to strangers; eating raw seal blubber; throwing grandma out to be eaten by polar bears; “ We are prepared to believe almost anything about such an unfamiliar and peculiar group,” says Martin, in a gentle reminder of our buried racist tendencies. The tale she tells is an embarrassing saga of scholarly sloppiness and popular eagerness to embrace exotic facts about other people’s languages without seeing the evidence. The fact is that the myth of the multiple words for snow is based on almost nothing at all. It is a kind of accidentally developed hoax perpetrated by the anthropological linguistics community on itself. The original source is Franz Boas’ introduction to The Handbook of North American Indians (1911). And all Boas says there, in the context of a low-key and slightly ill-explained discussion of independent versus derived terms for things in different languages, is that just as English uses separate roots for a variety of forms of water (liquid, lake, river, brook, rain, dew, wave, foam) that might be formed by derivational morphology from a single root meaning ‘water’ in some other language, so Eskimo uses the apparently distinct roots aput 'snow on the ground’, qana 'falling snow’, piqsirpoq 'drifting snow’, and qimuqsuq 'a snow drift’. Boas’ point is simply that English expresses these notions by phrases involving the root snow, but things could have been otherwise, just as the words for lake, river, etc. could have been formed derivationally or periphrastically on the root water. But with the next twist in the story, the unleashing of the xenomorphic fable of Eskimo lexicography seems to have become inevitable. What happened was that Benjamin Lee Whorf, Connecticut fire prevention inspector and weekend language-fancier, picked up Boas’ example and used it, vaguely, in his 1940 amateur linguistics article 'Science and linguistics,’ which was published in MIT’s promotional magazine Technology Review (Whorf was an alumnus; he had done his B.S. in chemical engineering at MIT). Our word snow would seem too inclusive to an Eskimo, our man from the Hartford Fire Insurance Company confidently asserts. With an uncanny perception into the hearts and minds of the hardy Arctic denizens (the more uncanny since Eskimos were not a prominent feature of Hartford’s social scene at the time), he avers: “We have the same word for falling snow, snow on the ground, snow packed hard like ice, slushy snow, wind-driven flying snow – whatever the situation may be. To an Eskimo, this all-inclusive word would be almost unthinkable; he would say that falling snow, slushy snow, and so on, are sensuously and operationally different.” […] Notice that Whorf’s statement has illicitly inflated Boas’ four terms to at least seven (1: “falling”, 2: “on the ground”, 3: “packed hard”, 4: “slushy”, 5: “flying”, 6, 7 …. : “and other kinds of snow”). Notice also that his claims about English speakers are false; I recall the stuff in question being called “snow” when fluffy and white, “slush” when partly melted, “sleet” when falling in a half-melted state, and a “blizzard” when pelting down hard enough to make driving dangerous. Whorf’s remark about his own speech community is no more reliable than his glib generalizations about what things are “sensuously and operationally different” to the generic Eskimo. But the lack of little things like verisimilitude and substantiation are not enough to stop a myth. Martin tracks the great Eskimo vocabulary hoax through successively more careless repetitions and embroiderings in a number of popular books on language. […] But never mind: three, four, seven, who cares? It’s a bunch, right? Once more popular sources start to get hold of the example, all constraints are removed: arbitrary numbers are just made up as the writer thinks appropriate for the readership. […] Among the many depressing things about this credulous transmission and elaboration of a false claim is that even if there were a large number of roots for different snow types in some Arctic language, this would not, objectively, be intellectually interesting; it would be a most mundane and unremarkable fact. Horsebreeders have various names for breeds, sizes, and ages of horses; botanists have names for leaf shapes; interior decorators have names for shades of mauve; printers have many different names for different fonts (Caslon, Garamond, Helvetica, Times Roman, and so on), naturally enough. If these obvious truths of specialization are supposed to be interesting facts about language, thought, and culture, then I’m sorry, but include me out. Would anyone think of writing about printers the same kind of slop we find written about Eskimos in bad linguistics textbooks? Take a random textbook like Paul Gaeng’s Introduction to the Principles of Language (1971), with its earnest assertion: “It is quite obvious that in the culture of the Eskimos… snow is of great enough importance to split up the conceptual sphere that corresponds to one word and one thought in English into several distinct classes…” (p. 137). Imagine reading: “It is quite obvious that in the culture of printers.., fonts are of great enough importance to split up the conceptual sphere that corresponds to one word and one thought among non-printers into several distinct classes…” Utterly boring, if even true. Only the link to those legendary, promiscuous, blubber-gnawing hunters of the icepacks could permit something this trite to be presented to us for contemplation.
Geoff Pullum, in The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax. (via allthingslinguistic)
+heroes of nusantara: multatuli
YES, I, Multatuli, “who have suffered much,”—I take the pen. I do not make any excuses for the form of my book,—that form was thought proper to obtain my object…. I will be read! Yes, I will be read. I will be read by statesmen who are obliged to pay attention to the signs of the times; by men of letters, who must also look into the book of which so many bad things are said; by merchants, who have an interest in the coffee auctions; by lady’s-maids, who read me for a few farthings; by governors-general in retirement; by ministers who have something to do; by the lackeys of these Excellencies; by mutes, who, more majorum, will say that I attack God Almighty, when I attack only the god which they made according to their own image; by the members of the representative chambers, who must know what happens in the extensive possessions over the sea which belong to Holland….
Ay, I shall be read!
Eduard Douwes Dekker was born in Amsterdam, March 2nd 1820. His father was a ship’s captain and intended for his son to have a career in trade. This humdrum prospect disgusted Douwes Dekker and in 1838 he obtained a post as a civil servant on the island of Java. During the period between 1848 and 1851 Douwes Dekker eventually rose to serve as assistant resident in various regencies in the Indonesian archipelago including Natal, North Sumatra, Manado in Sulawesi and Ambon in the Moluccas. In 1857 he was transferred to Lebak, in the Bantam residency of Java (now Banten province). By this time, however, all the secrets of Dutch administration were known to him, and he had begun to openly protest about the abuses of the colonial system. Consequently, he was threatened with dismissal from his office for his openness of speech. Douwes Dekker resigned his appointment and returned to the Netherlands.
He was determined to expose in detail the scandals he had witnessed, and he began to do so in newspaper articles and pamphlets. Little notice, however, was taken of his protestations until, in 1860, he published his novel Max Havelaar under the pseudonym of Multatuli. Douwes Dekker’s new pseudonym, which is derived from Latin, means, “I have suffered much”, or, more literally “I have borne much” referring to himself, as well as, it is thought, to the victims of the injustices he saw. An attempt was made to suppress the inflammatory book, but in vain; it was read all over Europe. Apologists for colonialism accused Douwes Dekker’s horrific depictions of being exaggerated.
[ his statue in amsterdam ]
Although it was translated into English in 1868, the text wasn’t available in the author’s home country until over a century later in 1972. Collectively, Multatuli’s Max Havelaar has been translated into 34 different languages worldwide since its initial publication. Credited as the stirring initiation of the nationalist movement responsible for the termination of Dutch colonization of Indonesia following World War II, Max Havelaar’s legacy is not confined to literary accomplishment, but can be considered a work of great political success and inspired social liberation. Max Havelaar’s influence on the national movement ultimately culminated in the passionate command to end decolonization worldwide. The story of Max Havelaar illuminates the inhumane and political injustices brutally imposed upon the native peoples of the region.
Sigmund Freud listed Multatuli as one of his favorite writers. Multatuli’s brother, Jan Douwes Dekker, was the grandfather of Ernest Douwes Dekker (also known as Danudirja Setiabudi, a National Hero of Indonesia). There is a museum for him in Amsterdam. Multatuli is also known as the person who coined the term emerald of equator, a poetic nickname of Indonesia.
This book is an introduction…. I shall increase in strength and sharpness of weapons, according as it may be necessary. Heaven grant that it may not be necessary!… No, it will not be necessary! For it is to thee I dedicate my book: WILLIAM THE THIRD, King, Grand Duke, Prince,… more than Prince, Grand Duke, and King,… EMPEROR of the magnificent empire of INSULIND, which winds about the equator like a garland of emeralds!… I ask THEE if it be thine IMPERIAL will that the Havelaars should be bespattered with the mud of Slymerings and Drystubbles; and that thy more than thirty millions of SUBJECTS far away should be ill treated and should suffer extortion in THY name!
source: wikipedia; culture trip
quotes from bartleby, excerpt of max havelaar
further reading: paper on multatuli
Christ the Redeemer (Portuguese: Cristo Redentor) is an Art Deco statue of Jesus Christ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, created by French sculptor Paul Landowski and built by the Brazilian engineer Heitor da Silva Costa, in collaboration with the French engineer Albert Caquot. It is 30 metres (98 ft) tall, not including its 8-metre (26 ft) pedestal, and its arms stretch 28 metres (92 ft) wide.
The statue weighs 635 metric tons (625 long, 700 short tons), and is located at the peak of the 700-metre (2,300 ft) Corcovadomountain in the Tijuca Forest National Park overlooking the city of Rio. As a symbol of Brazilian Christianity, the statue has become an icon for Rio de Janeiro and Brazil. It is made of reinforced concrete and soapstone, and was constructed between 1922 and 1931.
The statue of Christ the Redeemer with open arms, a symbol of peace, was chosen. Local engineer Heitor da Silva Costa designed the statue; it was sculpted by Polish-French sculptor Paul Landowski. Gheorghe Leonida contributed by portraying Jesus Christ’s face on the statue, which made him famous.
A group of engineers and technicians studied Landowski’s submissions and the decision was made to build the structure out of reinforced concrete (designed by Albert Caquot) instead of steel, more suitable for the cross-shaped statue. The outer layers are soapstone, chosen for its enduring qualities and ease of use. Construction took nine years, from 1922 to 1931 and cost the equivalent of US$250,000 ($3,300,000 in 2015). The monument was opened on October 12, 1931.During the opening ceremony, the statue was lit by a battery of floodlights turned on remotely by shortwave radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi, stationed 5,700 miles (9,200 km) away in Rome.(x)
On March 2, 1903 the Hotel Martha Washington became New York City’s first women-only hotel. Located on 30 East 30th Street, it served the growing population of professional women who otherwise struggled to find safe and socially acceptable lodging in the city. A far cry from the crowded boarding houses, this was a thoroughly modern operation housed in a twelve-story Renaissance Revival building that featured all the amenities, from a ladies’ tailor to electric lights. Upon opening, it was immediately popular, both with the women it served and with the curious onlookers who had a hard time coming to terms with the whole idea of the place.
George P. Hall & Son. Manhattan: Hotel Martha Washington. undated. photographic print. New-York Historical Society.
Robert L. Bracklow. The Hotel Martha Washington. February 23, 1903. Glass negative. New-York Historical Society.
Nyeleti Nokwazi Nkwinika was a year into her Master’s dissertation in English, and she was struggling. This has nothing to do with her work ethic: the problem lay with her hearing. Nyeleti was born deaf and like many others in her situation, she battles with written language.
Most deaf people are born into hearing families who don’t have any skills in Sign Language. In Nyeleti’s case, she only learned to use South African Sign Language fluently at school. When she got to high school she attended a mainstream hearing school with several other top performing deaf pupils from her previous school.
By then, she had missed out on too many years of access to English. South African Sign Language and English are differently structured. This can make it hard to learn for deaf people who’ve only ever used sign language to communicate. It’s also very difficult to learn written English when one has never heard the language or used it for conversational purposes.
Antibiotic resistance is one of the most pressing problems of our times. Traditional antimicrobial drugs aren’t working the way they used to, and the rise of “superbugs” could bring about the post-antibiotic age, where easily treatable infections suddenly become life-threatening incurable illnesses.
There have been a slew of new discoveries recently that have revealed brand new ways to turn the tide, but the latest revelation at the hands of a team from George Mason University is a particularly unusual sounding one. As it turns out, we could use the blood of dragons to annihilate superbugs.
No, this isn’t an analogy or a plot line from Game of Thrones. The devil-toothed Komodo dragon – the devious beast from Indonesia – has a particular suite of chemical compounds in its blood that’s pure anathema to a wide range of bacteria.
They’re known as CAMPs – cationic antimicrobial peptides – and although plenty of living creatures (including humans) have versions of these, Komodo dragons have 48, with 47 of them being powerfully antimicrobial. The team managed to cleverly isolate these CAMPs in a laboratory by using electrically-charged hydrogels – strange, aerated substances – to suck them out of the dragons’ blood samples.
Synthesizing their own versions of eight of these CAMPs, they put them up against two strains of lab-grown “superbugs,” MRSA and Pseudomona aeruginosa, to see if they had any effect. Remarkably, all eight were able to kill the latter, whereas seven of them destroyed all trace of both, doing something that plenty of conventional antibiotic drugs couldn’t.
Writing in the Journal of Proteome Research, the researchers write that these powerful CAMPs explain why Komodo dragons are able to contain such a dense, biodiverse population of incredibly dangerous bacteria in their mouths. Although it’s not clear where all these bacteria originally came from, the chemical compounds in their blood ensures that they’ll never be properly infected.
In fact, it was this ability to co-exist with such lethal bacteria that piqued the interest of the researchers in the first place.
“Komodo dragon serum has been demonstrated to have in vitro antibacterial properties,” they note. “The role that CAMPs play in the innate immunity of the Komodo dragon is potentially very informative, and the newly identified Komodo dragon CAMPs may lend themselves to the development of new antimicrobial therapeutics.”
It’ll be awhile before these CAMPs are tested in human trials, but the idea that we’re effectively using dragon’s blood, or plasma, to fight against resurgent diseases is genuinely quite thrilling. Alongside Hulk-like drugs that physically rip bacteria apart, there’s a chance that, with the help of these legendary lizards, we may win this war yet.
On this day, 14th February 1779, Captain James Cook was killed in Hawaii.
James Cook completed three major voyages of discovery. On his first, departing in 1768, he commanded the ‘Endeavour’ on an expedition to chart the transit of Venus. He returned to England in 1771, having also circumnavigated the globe, including exploring and charting New Zealand and Australia’s eastern coast.
On his second journey (1772-1775), he commanded the 'Resolution’ and the 'Adventure’ on an expedition to the South Pacific, disproving the rumour of a great southern continent, exploring the Antarctic Ocean, New Hebrides and New Caledonia.
Cook’s third and final voyage (1776-1779) of discovery was an attempt to locate a North-West Passage, an ice-free sea route which linked the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Again, Cook commanded the Resolution while Charles Clerke commanded Discovery. Leaving England in 1776, Cook first sailed south to Tahiti to return Omai, a Tahitian man, to his home. Omai had been taken on Cook’s second voyage and had been an object of curiosity in London. It was on this, Cook’s final voyage, that he discovered the Hawaiian Islands in January 1778. This major discovery would lead to his death – Cook was killed on a return visit to Hawaii at Kealakekua Bay, on 14 February 1779.
Kealakekua Bay was considered the sacred harbour of Lono, the fertility god of the Hawaiians. Cook and his compatriots were welcomed as gods but after one of the crewmen died, exposing the Europeans as mere mortals, relations became strained. On February 4, 1779, the British ships sailed from Kealakekua Bay, but rough seas damaged the foremast of the Resolution, and after only a week at sea the expedition was forced to return to Hawaii.
The Hawaiians greeted Cook and his men by hurling rocks; they then stole a small cutter vessel from the Discovery. Negotiations with King Kalaniopuu for the return of the cutter collapsed after a lesser Hawaiian chief was shot to death and a mob of Hawaiians descended on Cook’s party. The captain and his men fired on the angry Hawaiians, but they were soon overwhelmed, and only a few managed to escape to the safety of the Resolution. Captain Cook himself was killed by the mob. A few days later, the Englishmen retaliated by firing their cannons and muskets at the shore, killing some 30 Hawaiians. The Resolution and Discovery eventually returned to England.
The State Library of New South Wales holds significant original sources relating to James Cook, these paintings from the collection depict the death of Captain Cook.
Carved ditty box shaped like a coffin on silver stand, containing a rough watercolour sketch of the death of Cook, including a lock of Cook’s hair, ca. 1779 / carved by sailors on Cook’s last ship HMS Resolution. State Library of NSW.
Toward an Irish Republic
Ireland lived under England’s rule for almost four centuries. The Irish fought against this occupation through the press, through literature, in politics, and in the streets. They could not, however, create a united front of protesters because they were divided among themselves and struggled with their national identity.
Toward an Irish Republic focuses on the political progress made between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the Irish literary revival that occurred at the turn of the nineteenth century.
Driven by Ireland’s desire to build a separate identity from Britain, a distinct Irish literature began to emerge. The establishment of modern Irish literature contributed to the unification of the Irish. They explored their Gaelic roots, searching for stories of characters with the tenacity for which the Irish are now famous. Many Irish men and women also taught themselves the Gaelic language and read folklore. For example, Lady Sydney Morgan, in her novel The Wild Irish Girl (1806), wrote of a young Englishman who travels through Ireland and discovers its history and culture. Standish O’Grady retold Gaelic folktales and historical stories, such as “Birth of King Cormac” and “Teigue Mac Cein’s Adventure”, in his book Silva Gadelica (1892).
One of the greatest points of contention between the Irish and English was their denominational divide. The majority of people in Ireland identified themselves as Catholic, whereas the majority of the people in England were Protestants. The English, strongly opposed to Catholicism since Henry VIII broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, discouraged the Irish from practicing Catholicism. An early example of the political upheaval in Ireland is A Collection of Certain Horrid Murthers in the Several Counties of Ireland. Printed in 1679, this book lists Protestants that were killed during the Irish Rebellion of 1641 when Irish Catholics attempted to gain religious freedom.
Britain’s laws against Catholicism began to weaken by the end of the eighteenth century. In 1792, Theobald Wolfe Tone, one of the leaders of the United Irishmen, put forth his defense for Catholics to gain religious freedom in An Argument on Behalf of the Catholics of Ireland (1792). Many arguments for and against this issue were made, but it was not until 1829 that Catholics were emancipated, with the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act.
In 1921, a large portion of Ireland was able to gain independence. The Irish Free State, now known as the Republic of Ireland, was the result of these nationalist movements.
Bibliography
A Collection of Certain Horrid Murthers in the Several Counties of Ireland. London: Printed for Henry Brome, 1679. X 941.506 C685
Theobald Wolfe Tone. An argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland. Dublin: The United Irishmen, 1792. 320.9415 T61a5
Standish H. O’Grady. Silva Gadelica (I.-XXXI.): a Collection of Tales in Irish. London: Williams and Norgate, 1892. 891.6208 Og7s
Lady Sydney Morgan. The Wild Irish Girl. London: Printed for Richard Phillips, 1806. 823 M823W 1806
Free Online Language Courses
*UPDATED* Here is a masterpost of MOOCs (massive open online courses) that are available, archived, or starting soon. Some are short, some are very interactive, some are very in-depth. I think they will help those that like to learn with a teacher or with videos. I checked each link to make sure they are functioning.
Spanish
Beginner
AP Spanish Language & Culture
Basic Spanish for English Speakers
Beginner’s Spanish:Food & Drink
Fastbreak Spanish
How to Self-Study Spanish
Preparing for the AP Spanish Exam
Spanish for Beginners
Intermediate
Spanish:Ciudades con Historia
Spanish:Espacios Públicos
Advanced
Corrección, Estilo y Variaciones
La Innovación Social (Check under Translation)
Leer a Macondo (Taught in Spanish)
Spanish:Con Mis Propias Manos
Spanish: Perspectivas Porteñas
Reading Spanish Literature
French
Beginner
AP French Language and Culture
Basic French Skills
Beginner’s French: Food & Drink
Diploma in French
Elementary French I
Elementary French II
Français Interactif
French in Action
French Language Studies I
French Language Studies II
French Language Studies III
French:Ouverture
French Through Stories and Conversation
Improving Your French
Mastering French Grammar and Vocab
Intermediate
French: Le Quatorze Juillet
Passe Partout
Advanced
Fantasy, de l'Angleterre Victorienne au Trône de fer
La Cité des Sciences et de Industrie
Les Chansons des Troubadours
Reading French Literature
Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese for Beginners
Curso de Português para Estrangeiros
Italian
Beginner
Beginner’s Italian: Food & Drink
Beginner Italian I
Introduction to Italian
Oggi e Domani
Survive Italy Without Being Fluent
Intermediate
Intermediate Italian I
Advanced
Advanced Italian I
Italian Literature
Italian Novel of the Twentieth Century
L'innovazione Sociale (Check language under translation)
Reading Italian Literature
Catalan
Intro to Catalan Sign Language
Latin
Latin I (Taught in Italian)
Russian
Beginner
Basics of Russian
Easy Accelerated Learning for Russian
Russian Alphabet
Russian Essentials
Russian for Beginners
Russian Level I
Russian Phonetics and Pronunciation
Reading and Writing Russian
Travel Russian
Advanced
Business Russian (must register)
Let Us Speak Russian (must register)
Reading Master and Margarita
Russian as an Instrument of Communication
Siberia: Russian for Foreigners
Ukrainian
Read Ukrainian
Ukrainian Language for Beginners
Kazakh
A1-B2 Kazakh (Taught in Russian)
Chinese
Beginner
Basic Chinese
Basic Mandarin Chinese I
Basic Mandarin Chinese II
Beginner’s Chinese
Chinese for Beginners
Chinese Characters
Chinese for Travelers
Chinese is Easy
Chinese Made Easy
Easy Mandarin
First Year Chinese I
First Year Chinese II
Learn Oral Chinese
Mandarin Chinese I
Start Talking Mandarin Chinese
UT Gateway to Chinese
Intermediate
Intermediate Business Chinese
Intermediate Chinese
Intermediate Chinese Grammar
Japanese
Beginner’s Conversational Japanese
Genki
Japanese JOSHU
Learn 80 JLPT N5 Kanji I
Learn 80 JLPT N5 Kanji II
Learn 80 JLPT N5 Kanji III
Learn 80 JLPT N5 Kanji IV
Korean
Beginner
First Step Korean
How to Study Korean
Pathway to Spoken Korean
Intermediate
Intermediate Korean
Dutch
Introduction to Dutch
German
Beginner
Basic German
Basic Language Skills
Beginner’s German: Food & Drink
Conversational German I
Conversational German II
Conversational German III
Conversational German IV
Deutsch im Blick
Diploma in German
German A1 Grammar
German Alphabet
German Modal Verbs
Present Tense German
Rundblick-Beginner’s German
Study German Language from Native Speakers
Advanced
German:Regionen Traditionen und Geschichte
Landschaftliche Vielfalt
Reading German Literature
Norwegian
Learn The Norwegian Language
Norwegian on the Web
Swedish
Intro to Swedish
Finnish
A Taste of Finnish
Basic Finnish
Finnish for Immigrants
Finnish for Medical Professionals
Frisian
Introduction to Frisian (Taught in Dutch)
Icelandic
Icelandic 1-5
Arabic
Arabic for Global Exchange (in the drop down menu)
Arabic Language for Beginners
Arabic Without Walls
Conversational Arabic Made Easy
Intro to Arabic
Lebanese Arabic
Madinah Arabic
Moroccan Arabic
Read Arabic
Hebrew
Hebrew Alphabet Crashcourse
Know the Hebrew Alphabet
Hindi
A Door into Hindi
Business Hindi
Virtual Hindi
Indonesian
Learn Indonesian
Nepali
Beginner’s Conversation and Grammar
Welsh
Beginner’s Welsh
Discovering Wales
Irish
Introduction to Irish
Multiple Languages
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/global-studies-and-languages/ : MIT’s open courseware site has assignments and course material available.
I’ll keep an eye out for new courses and if you know of any, let me know so I can update this list.
Last updated: February 19, 2016
Fairyland, or, Through the Enchanted Forest.
[Gloucester, England], [Roberts Brothers], [ca. 1890-1915].
Bryn Mawr College Special Collections GV1469.F221 T4 1890z
This whimsical board game, with its blinding powder, cabbage, meat, and cake tokens, has it all! Wild two-headed animals ravage the forest and hapless children must make it through armed only with odd grocery items! The game is a new addition to the Bryn Mawr College Special Collections as part of the Ellery Yale Wood Collection of Children’s Books.
A prayer in Hebrew dating to the 8th or 9th century. This document was found in Dunhuang China, which was China’s gateway to the “Silk Road” during the medieval period. Dunhuang was visited by Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and other groups, and the caves at Dunhuang have been found to contain documents and art from all of these traditions.
A Random PSA On The Gei of Geisha - Part 1
The questions surrounding what arts that maiko and geiko practice comes up regularly, and instead of just posting them onto one of the tabs I’d rather lay it out in a post here first. The “Gei” (芸) in Geisha(芸者)/Geiko(芸妓)/Geigi(芸妓) means “Art” and there are many branches and types of art that one can master. For this part we’ll be looking at the direct performing arts that everyone knows the geisha are renowned for: music and dance. Dance - Mai (舞) All traditional Japanese dance styles have their roots in Shinto ceremonies that date back at least two millennia. There are two main styles to traditional dance practiced today: -Noh (能): Originally arrived in Japan from China in the 8th century and developed into the style we know today in the 13th century by Kan’ami (assisted by his son Zeami). Derived from the classical court style dances, it features small, precise movements to tell a story. It can be seen as “boring” or “obscure” if you’re not sure what to look for as you need to understand the movements to appreciate them to the fullest. This isn’t to say that it isn’t beautiful to behold without prior knowledge as it is quite enchanting! Gion Kobu’s Inoue school is part of the Noh tradition. -Kabuki (歌舞伎): Derived directly from Shinto ceremonies, it was created in 1603 by Izumo No Okuni, a shrine priestess who created her own style of dance and performed it on the dry riverbed of the Kamo River. She became so famous that she was invited to perform in front of the emperor! After seeing how popular the style of dance had become rival dance groups sprung up around her and established the kabuki that we know today. The style is known for its dramatic and often “wild” movements that are meant to be appreciated by the common people. Pontocho’s Onoe, Miyagawa Cho’s Wakayagi, Kamishichiken’s Hanayagi, and Gion Higashi’s Fujima schools are part of the Kabuki tradition. Music - Raku (楽) What would dance be without music? Music, like dance, can be broken down into two types: voice/song and instruments. Singing - Uta (歌): Maiko and geiko learn traditional ballads that are performed alongside dance. There are two types: Kouta (小唄) which means “short songs/ballads” and Nagauta (長唄) which means “long songs/ballad.” They are learned by listening to an instructor and then repeating and/or transcribing the words and melody together. There’s no “set” way of reading or learning a song like there is for Western music, so it takes a large amount of practice to perform any uta properly (although there are a few methods that do exist). Instruments - Gakki (楽器) There are many instruments practiced in the karyukai, but I’ll only go over the most common ones that are seen and heard on a regular basis. -Shamisen (三味線): A three stringed instrument that is played with a plectrum. It is the most common instrument in the karyukai as it developed as an instrument that the common people used. Most uta were created to be played with a shamisen. It resembles a simplified guitar and is played in a similar fashion. -Tsuzumi (鼓): The all encompassing word for drums, but specifically dual sided drums that are roped together. There are three main types learned by maiko and geiko: -Kotsuzumi (小鼓): Literally “Small Drum,” or sometimes known as the “regular” tsuzumi, it is held onto one’s shoulder and played by striking the drum with the free hand. -Ōtsuzumi (大鼓): Literally “Large Drum,” it is a larger size of the tsuzumi and features one end that is larger than the other. It produces a much deeper sound when struck. -Kakko (羯鼓): A wide headed tsuzumi that is played with the tsuzumi sitting on the floor and the musician striking it with rods known as bachi (桴). It is the closest equivalent to Western style drums. -Fue (笛): The all encompassing word for flute, which in traditional Japanese style is usually made from bamboo. There are two types of fue that include: -Shakuhachi (尺八): The most commonly seen and heard flute that accompanies traditional Japanese music. It features 5 holes (4 on top and 1 underneath). Its sound is often described as “haunting” as it gently pierces through silence to deliver melodies full of both happiness and sadness. -Shinobue (篠笛)/Yokobue (横笛): Flutes that are much closer to Western ones, but are still made from wood. It features 7 holes that allows it to play more notes than the shakuhachi. This type is often played with the end resting on the musician’s shoulder. -Koto (事): A 13 stringed instrument that’s considered a type of lute although it plays closer to that of a harp. Due to its size it lays flat on the floor and the musician plucks the strings individually to produce sound. Those who are new to the koto often wear metal guards on their fingers to keep the strings from slicing into their skin until their hands have developed enough to withstand the pressure. -Kokyū (胡弓): Taught exclusively in Miyagawa Cho as it was once considered an instrument of the oiran, a kakyu is a smaller version of the shamisen that’s played upright with a bow instead of a plectrum.
Molecule of the Day: Dopamine
Dopamine (C8H11NO2) is an important neurotransmitter involved in many signalling pathways in the body. At room temperature, it is a white powder that is freely soluble in water.
Dopamine plays a key role in the brain’s reward system and is associated with feelings of euphoria and pleasure. As a result, stimuli that cause greater amounts of dopamine to bind to the corresponding receptors on the post-synaptic membrane induce appetitive behaviour.
For example, drugs such as amphetamine bind to and inhibit dopamine reuptake transporters present on the pre-synaptic membrane, and can also inhibit monoamine oxidase, which normally metabolises dopamine. This causes the concentration of dopamine in the synaptic cleft to increase, and the resultant rise in binding of dopamine receptors leads to feelings of pleasure. However, in combination with the resultant tolerance, this can lead to addiction and dependence on such drugs.
Dopamine is biosynthesised from tyrosine in the human body, via the intermediacy of L-DOPA:
Low dopamine levels have been linked to Parkinson’s disease; this is because the main symptoms arise from the death of dopamine-producing cells in the brain. Consequently, one of the main methods of treating it is the injection of L-DOPA; while this does not recover the cells’ ability to produce dopamine, it can stimulate the remaining cells, and is also metabolised to form dopamine (see above).
Largest Batch of Earth-size, Habitable Zone Planets
Our Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in an area called the habitable zone, where liquid water is most likely to exist on a rocky planet.
This exoplanet system is called TRAPPIST-1, named for The Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope (TRAPPIST) in Chile. In May 2016, researchers using TRAPPIST announced they had discovered three planets in the system.
Assisted by several ground-based telescopes, Spitzer confirmed the existence of two of these planets and discovered five additional ones, increasing the number of known planets in the system to seven.
This is the FIRST time three terrestrial planets have been found in the habitable zone of a star, and this is the FIRST time we have been able to measure both the masses and the radius for habitable zone Earth-sized planets.
All of these seven planets could have liquid water, key to life as we know it, under the right atmospheric conditions, but the chances are highest with the three in the habitable zone.
At about 40 light-years (235 trillion miles) from Earth, the system of planets is relatively close to us, in the constellation Aquarius. Because they are located outside of our solar system, these planets are scientifically known as exoplanets. To clarify, exoplanets are planets outside our solar system that orbit a sun-like star.
In this animation, you can see the planets orbiting the star, with the green area representing the famous habitable zone, defined as the range of distance to the star for which an Earth-like planet is the most likely to harbor abundant liquid water on its surface. Planets e, f and g fall in the habitable zone of the star.
Using Spitzer data, the team precisely measured the sizes of the seven planets and developed first estimates of the masses of six of them. The mass of the seventh and farthest exoplanet has not yet been estimated.
For comparison…if our sun was the size of a basketball, the TRAPPIST-1 star would be the size of a golf ball.
Based on their densities, all of the TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky. Further observations will not only help determine whether they are rich in water, but also possibly reveal whether any could have liquid water on their surfaces.
The sun at the center of this system is classified as an ultra-cool dwarf and is so cool that liquid water could survive on planets orbiting very close to it, closer than is possible on planets in our solar system. All seven of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary orbits are closer to their host star than Mercury is to our sun.
The planets also are very close to each other. How close? Well, if a person was standing on one of the planet’s surface, they could gaze up and potentially see geological features or clouds of neighboring worlds, which would sometimes appear larger than the moon in Earth’s sky.
The planets may also be tidally-locked to their star, which means the same side of the planet is always facing the star, therefore each side is either perpetual day or night. This could mean they have weather patterns totally unlike those on Earth, such as strong wind blowing from the day side to the night side, and extreme temperature changes.
Because most TRAPPIST-1 planets are likely to be rocky, and they are very close to one another, scientists view the Galilean moons of Jupiter – lo, Europa, Callisto, Ganymede – as good comparisons in our solar system. All of these moons are also tidally locked to Jupiter. The TRAPPIST-1 star is only slightly wider than Jupiter, yet much warmer.
How Did the Spitzer Space Telescope Detect this System?
Spitzer, an infrared telescope that trails Earth as it orbits the sun, was well-suited for studying TRAPPIST-1 because the star glows brightest in infrared light, whose wavelengths are longer than the eye can see. Spitzer is uniquely positioned in its orbit to observe enough crossing (aka transits) of the planets in front of the host star to reveal the complex architecture of the system.
Every time a planet passes by, or transits, a star, it blocks out some light. Spitzer measured the dips in light and based on how big the dip, you can determine the size of the planet. The timing of the transits tells you how long it takes for the planet to orbit the star.
The TRAPPIST-1 system provides one of the best opportunities in the next decade to study the atmospheres around Earth-size planets. Spitzer, Hubble and Kepler will help astronomers plan for follow-up studies using our upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, launching in 2018. With much greater sensitivity, Webb will be able to detect the chemical fingerprints of water, methane, oxygen, ozone and other components of a planet’s atmosphere.
At 40 light-years away, humans won’t be visiting this system in person anytime soon…that said…this poster can help us imagine what it would be like:
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Aphasia: The disorder that makes you lose your words
It’s hard to imagine being unable to turn thoughts into words. But, if the delicate web of language networks in your brain became disrupted by stroke, illness or trauma, you could find yourself truly at a loss for words. This disorder, called “aphasia,” can impair all aspects of communication. Approximately 1 million people in the U.S. alone suffer from aphasia, with an estimated 80,000 new cases per year. About one-third of stroke survivors suffer from aphasia, making it more prevalent than Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis, yet less widely known.
There are several types of aphasia, grouped into two categories: fluent (or “receptive”) aphasia and non-fluent (or “expressive”) aphasia.
People with fluent aphasia may have normal vocal inflection, but use words that lack meaning. They have difficulty comprehending the speech of others and are frequently unable to recognize their own speech errors.
People with non-fluent aphasia, on the other hand, may have good comprehension, but will experience long hesitations between words and make grammatical errors. We all have that “tip-of-the-tongue” feeling from time to time when we can’t think of a word. But having aphasia can make it hard to name simple everyday objects. Even reading and writing can be difficult and frustrating.
It’s important to remember that aphasia does not signify a loss in intelligence. People who have aphasia know what they want to say, but can’t always get their words to come out correctly. They may unintentionally use substitutions, called “paraphasias” – switching related words, like saying dog for cat, or words that sound similar, such as house for horse. Sometimes their words may even be unrecognizable.
So, how does this language-loss happen? The human brain has two hemispheres. In most people, the left hemisphere governs language. We know this because in 1861, the physician Paul Broca studied a patient who lost the ability to use all but a single word: “tan.” During a postmortem study of that patient’s brain, Broca discovered a large lesion in the left hemisphere, now known as “Broca’s area.” Scientists today believe that Broca’s area is responsible in part for naming objects and coordinating the muscles involved in speech. Behind Broca’s area is Wernicke’s area, near the auditory cortex. That’s where the brain attaches meaning to speech sounds. Damage to Wernicke’s area impairs the brain’s ability to comprehend language. Aphasia is caused by injury to one or both of these specialized language areas.
Fortunately, there are other areas of the brain which support these language centers and can assist with communication. Even brain areas that control movement are connected to language. Our other hemisphere contributes to language too, enhancing the rhythm and intonation of our speech. These non-language areas sometimes assist people with aphasia when communication is difficult.
However, when aphasia is acquired from a stroke or brain trauma, language improvement may be achieved through speech therapy. Our brain’s ability to repair itself, known as “brain plasticity,” permits areas surrounding a brain lesion to take over some functions during the recovery process. Scientists have been conducting experiments using new forms of technology, which they believe may encourage brain plasticity in people with aphasia.
Meanwhile, many people with aphasia remain isolated, afraid that others won’t understand them or give them extra time to speak. By offering them the time and flexibility to communicate in whatever way they can, you can help open the door to language again, moving beyond the limitations of aphasia.
“The Mouse chirpeth… The Duck quaketh… The Wolf howleth” — from the very first picture book for children, published in 1658: http://buff.ly/2l6FaBH
Starting in the mid-seventh century, the Japanese government placed a ban on eating meat which lasted on and off for over 1,200 years. Probably influenced by the Buddhist precept that forbids the taking of life, Emperor Tenmu issued an edict in 675 CE that banned the eating of beef, monkeys, and domestic animals under penalty of death. (Side note: monkey must have been very popular to be named specifically in the law!) Emperor Tenmu’s original law was only meant to be observed between April and September. But later laws and religious practices essentially made eating most meat, especially beef, illegal or taboo.
It was not until 1872 that Japanese authorities officially lifted the ban. Even the emperor had become a meat eater, to show it was totally okay and not angering Buddha. While not everybody was immediately enthused, particularly monks, the centuries-old taboo on eating meat soon faded away.
On this day, 13th February 1743, Sir Joseph Banks was born.
Sir Joseph Banks was a British botanist and naturalist who sailed with Captain James Cook on the Endeavour voyage of 1770.
Joseph Banks was born on 13 February 1743 in London. His passion for botany began at school. From 1760 to 1763 he studied at Oxford University, during which time he inherited a considerable fortune. In 1766, Banks travelled to Newfoundland and Labrador, collecting plant and other specimens. The same year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.
In 1768, he joined the Society’s expedition, led by Captain James Cook, to explore the uncharted lands of the South Pacific. The expedition circumnavigated the globe and visited South America, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia and Java. Banks collected an enormous number of specimens on the way and, on his return, his scientific account of the voyage and its discoveries sparked considerable interest across Europe.
The journal kept by the then 25-year-old Joseph Banks on board HMS Endeavour is one of the State Library’s most significant manuscripts. It records the first Pacific voyage of Captain James Cook from 1768 to 1771. Following the Endeavour’s return to England in 1771, Banks was hailed as a hero.
The State Library’s Sir Joseph Banks collection includes correspondence, reports, invoices, accounts, maps and watercolour drawings which document the far reaching influence of Banks on the colony. This significant archive containing over 7,000 pages has recently been digitised and now needs to be transcribed. Once fully transcribed the archive will be keyword searchable which will enhance discovery and access to the collection and increase the research potential in this significant archive.
Find out more about how to transcribe the Banks Papers
CHAUVET CAVE:
THE Chauvet Cave (also known as the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave) is a Palaeolithic cave situated near Vallon-Pont-d’Arc in the Ardèche region of southern France that houses impeccably preserved, exquisite examples of prehistoric art.
Now reliably dated to between c. 33,000 and c. 30,000 years ago, the numerous and diverse animals that dot the interior walls of the cave – both painted and engraved – show such high artistic quality that they were initially thought to have been closer in age to the similarly stunning, but much younger art in caves such as the Lascaux Cave. Its age and artistry have made us reconsider the story of art as well as the capabilities of these humans. The cave has been granted UNESCO World Heritage status.
Read More
Article by Emma Groeneveld on AHE
Marine biology basics: a reading list
Someone recently asked me to “explain to me the basics of marine biology“ and I didn’t even know where to begin because that’s a HUGE topic with so much interesting stuff to think about. I asked some of my fellow scientists on twitter and we put together a list of good reading and watching to get an overview of what marine biology is all about. This list is broken down by ages. Comment with any more suggestions and I’ll add them!
Kids:
1)National Geographic Kids, Really Wild Animals, Deep Sea Dive (recommended by @DrKatfish on twitter) I watched this video when I was a kid and have been hooked on cephalopods ever since. If you listened to me on NPR’s Science Friday, this was the video I was talking about!
2) The Magic Schoolbus- on the ocean floor (recommended by @easargent184 and @mirandaRHK on twitter)
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Magic-School-Bus-Ocean-Floor/dp/0590414313#reader_0590414313
3) Ocean Sunlight- How tiny plants feed the seas (recommended by @ColemanLab on twitter)
Amazon link:https://www.amazon.com/Ocean-Sunlight-Tiny-Plants-Feed/dp/0545273226
All ages
There are a TON of resources on The Bridge, so that’s a good place to start.
1) Blue Planet Series (recommended by @PaulSFenton on twitter) Great series, it’s on netflix and amazon
2) A Day in the life of a marine biologist (recommended by @Napaaqtuk on twitter)
3) Diving Deep with Sylvia Earle (recommended by @Napaaqtuk on twitter)
4) My wish: Protext our Oceans (Sylvia Earle) (also recommended by @Napaaqtuk on twitter)
Adults
1) At the Water’s Edge (Recommended by @PaulSFenton on twitter) “More a book about evolution featuring marine animals but still a v. good read.“
2) Four Fish: The future of the last wild Food (Recommended by me!) A great book about fisheries
3) Kraken : The Curious, Exciting, and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid (Recommended by me)
4) The Edge of the Sea by Rachel Carson (recommended by @MirandaRHK on twitter)
5) The Sea Around Us- Rachel Carson (Recommended by @aecahill on twitter)
6) An Unnatural History of the Sea- Callum Roberts
Artist profile: Gerard Sekoto
‘Art is the spark, the illumination which is socially significant for it brings about understanding’ – Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993)
Gerard Sekoto was born in Botshabelo, Mpumalanga province, in 1913, the year in which the Natives Land Act dispossessed many black South Africans of their ancestral lands. In 1938 Sekoto moved to Sophiatown, Johannesburg. He held his first solo exhibition the following year, and in 1940 the Johannesburg Art Gallery purchased his work Yellow Houses – A Street in Sophiatown (1939–1940). It was the first painting by a black South African artist to be acquired by a South African art institution, although Sekoto had to pose as a cleaner to see his own painting hanging in the gallery.
Sekoto based this painting, titled Song of the Pick (1946), on a photograph taken in the 1930s of black South African workers labouring under the watchful eye of a white foreman standing behind them. However, in his painting the dynamic has changed. Sekoto has enhanced the grace and power of the labourers, turning them to confront the small and puny figure of the overseer, who appears about to be impaled by their pickaxes.
Sekoto painted this work in the township of Eastwood in Pretoria, shortly before moving to Paris in what became a lifelong exile from South Africa. During the 1980s, postcard-sized reproductions of this iconic painting were widely distributed in South Africa, as both a badge of honour and a source of inspiration in the struggle against apartheid.
Explore a diverse range of art stretching back 100,000 years in our exhibition South Africa: the art of a nation (27 October 2016 – 26 February 2017).
Exhibition sponsored by Betsy and Jack Ryan
Logistics partner IAG Cargo
Song of the Pick, 1946. Image © Iziko Museums of South Africa, Art Collections, Cape Town. Photo by Carina Beyer.
Song of the Pick was based on this image, taken by photographer Andrew Goldie in the 1930s.
Well this was something I didn’t know about! So the gist is that Polari was a secret language for gay men (much like thieves cant) in the UK used before the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1967.
What Polari shows and is an example of, is that everyday people USE language for particular purposes that shape our identity. Interestingly, much like other words or varieties of languages that are considered negative, sexist or racist by society, using Polari was seen by some homosexuals as a form of oppression and acknowledgment of being somehow fundamentally different from non-homosexuals.
(Image caption: This type of electrocorticography (ECoG) grid, which is implanted in patients about to undergo epilepsy surgery, enables researchers to record and transmit electrical signals to and from the surface of the brain. Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington)
For the first time in humans, researchers use brain surface stimulation to provide ‘touch’ feedback to direct movement
In the quest to restore movement to people with spinal cord injuries, researchers have focused on getting brain signals to disconnected nerves and muscles that no longer receive messages that would spur them to move.
But grasping a cup or brushing hair or cooking a meal requires other feedback that has been lost in amputees and individuals with paralysis — a sense of touch. The brain needs information from a fingertip or limb or external device to understand how firmly a person is gripping or how much pressure is needed to perform everyday tasks.
Now, University of Washington researchers at the National Science Foundation Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE) have used direct stimulation of the human brain surface to provide basic sensory feedback through artificial electrical signals, enabling a patient to control movement while performing a simple task: opening and closing his hand.
It’s a first step towards developing “closed loop,” bi-directional brain-computer interfaces (BBCIs) that enable two-way communication between parts of the nervous system. They would also allow the brain to directly control external prosthetics or other devices that can enhance movement — or even reanimate a paralyzed limb — while getting sensory feedback.
The results of this research will be published in the Oct.-Dec. 2016 issue of IEEE Transactions on Haptics. An early-access version of the paper is available online.
“We were able to provide a baseline degree of sensory feedback by direct cortical stimulation of the brain,” said lead author and UW bioengineering doctoral student Jeneva Cronin. “To our knowledge this is the first time it’s been done in a human patient who was awake and performing a motor task that depended on that feedback.”
The team of bioengineers, computer scientists and medical researchers from the CSNE and UW’s GRIDLab used electrical signals of different current intensities, dictated by the position of the patient’s hand measured by a glove he wore, to stimulate the patient’s brain that had been implanted with electrocorticographic (ECoG) electrodes. The patient then used those artificial signals delivered to the brain to “sense” how the researchers wanted him to move his hand.
“The question is: Can humans use novel electrical sensations that they’ve never felt before, perceive them at different levels and use this to do a task? And the answer seems to be yes,” said co-author and UW bioengineering doctoral student James Wu. “Whether this type of sensation can be as diverse as the textures and feelings that we can sense tactilely is an open question.”
They would also allow the brain to directly control external prosthetics or other devices that can enhance movement — or even reanimate a paralyzed limb — while getting sensory feedback.
It’s difficult for a person to mimic natural movements — whether using a prosthetic device or a limb that has become disconnected from the brain by neurological injury — without sensation. Though there are devices to assist patients with paralysis or who have undergone amputations with basic function, being able to feel again ranks highly on their priorities, researchers said.
Restoring this sensory feedback requires developing an “artificial” language of electrical signals that the brain can interpret as sensation and incorporate as useful feedback when performing a task.
The UW CSNE team frequently works with patients about to undergo epilepsy surgery who have recently had an ECoG electrode grid implanted on the surface of their brain. For several days or weeks, doctors constantly monitor their brain activity to pinpoint the origin of their seizures before operating.
By consenting to participate in research studies during this period when their brain is “wired,” these patients enable researchers to answer basic neurological questions. They can test which parts of the brain are activated during different behaviors, what happens when a certain region of the brain’s cortex is stimulated and even how to induce brain plasticity to promote rehabilitation and healing across damaged areas.
The potential to use ECoG electrodes implanted on the surface of the brain in future prosthetic or rehabilitative applications offers several advantages — the signals are stronger and more accurate than sensors placed on the scalp, but less invasive than ones that penetrate the brain, as in a recent study by University of Pittsburgh researchers.
In the UW study, three patients wore a glove embedded with sensors that provided data about where their fingers and joints were positioned. They were asked to stay within a target position somewhere between having their hands open and closed without being able to see what that target position was. The only feedback they received about the target hand position was artificial electrical data delivered by the research team.
When their hands opened too far, they received no electrical stimulus to the brain. When their hand was too closed – similar to squeezing something too hard – the electrical stimuli was provided at a higher intensity.
One patient was able to achieve accuracies in reaching the target position well above chance when receiving the electrical feedback. Performance dropped when the patient received random signals regardless of hand position, suggesting that the subject had been using the artificial sensory feedback to control hand movement.
Providing that artificial sensory feedback in a way that the brain can understand is key to developing prosthetics, implants or other neural devices that could restore a sense of position, touch or feeling in patients where that connection has been severed.
“Right now we’re using very primitive kinds of codes where we’re changing only frequency or intensity of the stimulation, but eventually it might be more like a symphony,” said co-author Rajesh Rao, CSNE director and UW professor of computer science & engineering.
“That’s what you’d need to do to have a very natural grip for tasks such as preparing a dish in the kitchen. When you want to pick up the salt shaker and all your ingredients, you need to exert just the right amount of pressure. Any day-to-day task like opening a cupboard or lifting a plate or breaking an egg requires this complex sensory feedback.”
Idempotence.
A term I’d always found intriguing, mostly because it’s such an unusual word. It’s a concept from mathematics and computer science but can be applied more generally—not that it often is. Basically, it’s an operation that, no matter how many times you do it, you’ll still get the same result, at least without doing other operations in between. A classic example would be view_your_bank_balance being idempotent, and withdraw_1000 not being idempotent.
HTs: @aidmcg and Ewan Silver who kept saying it
The Normans - A Timeline
911: According to later writer Dudo of Saint-Quentin, in this year the king of the Franks, Charles the Simple, grants land around the city of Rouen to Rollo, or Rolf, leader of the Vikings who have settled the region: the duchy of Normandy is founded. In return Rollo undertakes to protect the area and to receive baptism, taking the Christian name Robert.
1002: Emma, sister of Duke Richard II of Normandy, marries Æthelred (‘the Unready’), king of England. Their son, the future Edward the Confessor, flees to Normandy 14 years later when England is conquered by King Cnut, and remains there for the next quarter of a century. This dynastic link is later used as one of the justifications for the Norman conquest.
1016: A group of Norman pilgrims en route to Jerusalem are ‘invited’ to help liberate southern Italy from Byzantine (Greek) control. Norman knights have already been operating as mercenaries here since the turn of the first millennium, selling their military services to rival Lombard, Greek and Muslim rulers.
1035: Having ruled Normandy for eight years, Duke Robert I falls ill on his return from
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and dies at Nicaea. By prior agreement, Robert is succeeded by his illegitimate son William, the future Conqueror of England, then aged just seven or eight. A decade of violence follows as Norman nobles fight each other for control of the young duke and his duchy.
1051: Duke William visits England. His rule in Normandy now established, and newly married to Matilda of Flanders, William crosses the Channel to speak with his second cousin, King Edward the Confessor of England. The subject of their conference is unknown, but later chroniclers assert that at this time Edward promises William the English succession.
1059: Pope Nicholas II invests the Norman Robert Guiscard with the dukedoms of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. The popes had opposed the ambitions of the Normans in Italy, but defeat in battle at Civitate in southern Italy in 1053 had caused them to reconsider. In 1060 Robert and his brother Roger embark on the conquest of Sicily, and Roger subsequently rules the island as its great count.
1066: Edward the Confessor dies on 5 January, and the throne is immediately taken by his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson, the most powerful earl in England, with strong popular backing. Harold defeats his Norwegian namesake at Stamford Bridge in September. But on 14 October William’s Norman forces defeat Harold’s army at Hastings. William is crowned as England’s king on Christmas Day.
1069: The initial years of William’s reign in England are marked by almost constant English rebellion, matched by violent Norman repression. In autumn 1069 a fresh English revolt is triggered by a Danish invasion. William responds by laying waste to the country north of the Humber, destroying crops and cattle in a campaign that becomes known as the Harrying of the North, leading to widespread famine and death.
1086: Worried by the threat of Danish invasion, at Christmas 1085 William decides to survey his kingdom – partly to assess its wealth, and partly to settle arguments about landownership created by 20 years of conquest. The results, later redacted and compiled as Domesday Book, are probably brought to him in August 1086 at Old Sarum (near Salisbury), where all landowners swear an oath to him.
1087: William retaliates against a French invasion of Normandy. While attacking Mantes he is taken ill or injured – possibly damaging his intestines on the pommel of his saddle – and retires to Rouen, where he dies on 9 September. Taken to Caen for burial, his body proves too fat for its stone sarcophagus, and bursts when monks try to force it in. His eldest surviving son, Robert Curthose, becomes duke of Normandy, while England passes to his second son, William Rufus.
1096: Following a call to arms by Pope Urban II in 1095, many Normans set out towards the Holy Land on the First Crusade, determined to recover Jerusalem. Among them are Robert Curthose, who mortgages Normandy to his younger brother, William Rufus, and William the Conqueror’s notorious half-brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux. Odo dies en route and is buried in Palermo, but Robert goes on to win victories in Palestine and is present when Jerusalem falls.
1100: Having succeeded his father in 1087 and defeated Robert Curthose’s attempts to unseat him, the rule of William II (‘Rufus’, depicted below) seems secure. But on 2 August 1100, while hunting in the New Forest with some of his barons, William is struck by a stray arrow and killed. His body is carted to Winchester for burial, and the English throne passes to his younger brother, Henry, who is crowned in Westminster Abbey just three days later.
1101: Roger I of Sicily dies. By the end of his long rule, Count Roger has gained control over the whole of Sicily – the central Muslim town of Enna submitted in 1087, and the last emirs in the southeast surrendered in 1091. He is briefly succeeded by his eldest son, Simon, but the new count dies in 1105 and is succeeded by his younger brother, Roger II.
1120: On 25 November Henry I sets out across the Channel from Normandy to England. One of the vessels in his fleet, the White Ship, strikes a rock soon after its departure, with the loss of all but one of its passengers. One of the drowned is the king’s only legitimate son, William Ætheling. Henry responds by fixing the succession on his daughter, Matilda, and marrying her to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou.
1130: Roger II is crowned king of Sicily, having pushed for royal status in order to assert his authority over the barons of southern Italy. A disputed papal succession in 1130 has provided an opportunity and, in return for support against a papal rival, Pope Anacletus II confers the kingship on Roger in September. He is crowned in Palermo Cathedral on Christmas Day.
1135: Henry I dies in Normandy on 1 December, reportedly after ignoring doctor’s orders and eating his favourite dish - lampreys. His body is shipped back to England for burial at the abbey he founded in Reading. Many of his barons reject the rule of his daughter, Matilda, instead backing his nephew, Stephen, who is crowned as England’s new king on 22 December.
1154: King Stephen, the last Norman king of England, dies. His death ends the vicious civil war between him and his cousin Matilda that lasted for most of his reign. As a result of the Treaty of Wallingford, which Stephen was pressured to sign in 1153, he is succeeded by Matilda’s son Henry of Anjou, who takes the throne as Henry II.
1174: King William II of Sicily begins the construction of the great church at Monreale (‘Mount Royal’), nine miles from his capital at Palermo. The building is a fusion of Byzantine, Latin and Muslim architectural styles, and is decorated throughout with gold mosaics, including the earliest depiction of Thomas Becket, martyred in 1170.
1194: Norman rule on Sicily ends. Tancred of Lecce, son of Roger III, Duke of Apulia, seizes the throne on William’s death in 1189; on his death in 1194 he is succeeded by his young son, William III. Eight months later, Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, husband of Roger II’s daughter Constance, invades Sicily and is crowned in Palermo on Christmas Day. The following day, Constance gives birth to their son, the future Frederick II.
1204: King John loses Normandy to the French. The youngest son of Henry II, John had succeeded to England, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine after the death of his elder brother, Richard the Lionheart, in 1199. But in just five years he lost almost all of his continental lands to his rival King Philip Augustus of France – the end of England’s link with Normandy.
(Image caption: Measurement of brain activity in a patient with phantom limb pain. Credit: Osaka University)
Cause of phantom limb pain in amputees, and potential treatment, identified
Researchers have discovered that a ‘reorganisation’ of the wiring of the brain is the underlying cause of phantom limb pain, which occurs in the vast majority of individuals who have had limbs amputated, and a potential method of treating it which uses artificial intelligence techniques.
The researchers, led by a group from Osaka University in Japan in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, used a brain-machine interface to train a group of ten individuals to control a robotic arm with their brains. They found that if a patient tried to control the prosthetic by associating the movement with their missing arm, it increased their pain, but training them to associate the movement of the prosthetic with the unaffected hand decreased their pain.
Their results, reported in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrate that in patients with chronic pain associated with amputation or nerve injury, there are ‘crossed wires’ in the part of the brain associated with sensation and movement, and that by mending that disruption, the pain can be treated. The findings could also be applied to those with other forms of chronic pain, including pain due to arthritis.
Approximately 5,000 amputations are carried out in the UK every year, and those with type 1 or type 2 diabetes are at particular risk of needing an amputation. In most cases, individuals who have had a hand or arm amputated, or who have had severe nerve injuries which result in a loss of sensation in their hand, continue to feel the existence of the affected hand as if it were still there. Between 50 and 80 percent of these patients suffer with chronic pain in the ‘phantom’ hand, known as phantom limb pain.
“Even though the hand is gone, people with phantom limb pain still feel like there’s a hand there – it basically feels painful, like a burning or hypersensitive type of pain, and conventional painkillers are ineffective in treating it,” said study co-author Dr Ben Seymour, a neuroscientist based in Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “We wanted to see if we could come up with an engineering-based treatment as opposed to a drug-based treatment.”
A popular theory of the cause of phantom limb pain is faulty ‘wiring’ of the sensorimotor cortex, the part of the brain that is responsible for processing sensory inputs and executing movements. In other words, there is a mismatch between a movement and the perception of that movement.
In the study, Seymour and his colleagues, led by Takufumi Yanagisawa from Osaka University, used a brain-machine interface to decode the neural activity of the mental action needed for a patient to move their ‘phantom’ hand, and then converted the decoded phantom hand movement into that of a robotic neuroprosthetic using artificial intelligence techniques.
“We found that the better their affected side of the brain got at using the robotic arm, the worse their pain got,” said Yanagisawa. “The movement part of the brain is working fine, but they are not getting sensory feedback – there’s a discrepancy there.”
The researchers then altered their technique to train the ‘wrong’ side of the brain: for example, a patient who was missing their left arm was trained to move the prosthetic arm by decoding movements associated with their right arm, or vice versa. When they were trained in this counter-intuitive technique, the patients found that their pain significantly decreased. As they learned to control the arm in this way, it takes advantage of the plasticity – the ability of the brain to restructure and learn new things – of the sensorimotor cortex, showing a clear link between plasticity and pain.
Although the results are promising, Seymour warns that the effects are temporary, and require a large, expensive piece of medical equipment to be effective. However, he believes that a treatment based on their technique could be available within five to ten years. “Ideally, we’d like to see something that people could have at home, or that they could incorporate with physio treatments,” he said. “But the results demonstrate that combining AI techniques with new technologies is a promising avenue for treating pain, and an important area for future UK-Japan research collaboration.”