Very inspiring!

 

these are my kind of people!

 website:  https://medium.com/thoughts-on-creativity/6f4cb1886d41

Welcome to Dinovember

A month-long imagination invasion.

Every year, my wife and I devote the month of November to convincing our children their plastic dinosaur figures come to life while they sleep.

It began modestly enough. The kids woke up to discover that the dinosaurs had gotten into a box of cereal and made a mess on the kitchen table.

Keep on keepin' on brain (*article i can't remember the source for - i didn't write this - it's just increadible

I did not write this - and should have written down where i cut and pasted this.
go to Charlie Gross's page  http://psych.princeton.edu/psychology/research/gross/index.php

i own zero of this information - but thought it was amazing and wanted to be sure i captured this idea.  When i find the article again - i will sight it. 


related site:  http://www.radiolab.org/story/235337-how-grow-your-brain/



"EXPERIENCE INFLUENCES STRUCTURAL PLASTICITY

How does experience alter the brain? For decades, neuroscientists believed that the adult brain responded to experience with changes in physiology, but not in structure. Now we know that the adult brain exhibits a considerable amount of structural plasticity, including the addition of new neurons as well as changes in the connections between existing neurons. These may serve as a substrate for experience-dependent change in the brain.

Gould and her coworkers have recently demonstrated that living in different habitats alters brain structure in adult primates. Elizabeth Gould and Charlie Gross, both professors in the Psychology Department, and Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, compared the brains of adult marmosets living in semi-naturalistic environments (large enclosures with natural vegetation and opportunities for foraging) with the brains of animals living in standard laboratory cages and found dramatic differences in structural plasticity. Not only did the animals living in the more complex environments have more connections between neurons, but they also exhibited a higher rate of neurogenesis than their cage control counterparts. The changes were observed in the hippocampus and the cerebral cortex, two brain regions important for cognition and regulation of emotion.

Do these results reveal mechanisms by which the brain responds to experience in animals living in the wild? If so, which variables of the complex environment -increased physical activity, social interaction or learning- are involved in these changes? Alternatively, does housing animals in a relatively complex environment simply reverse brain atrophy caused by laboratory cage-induced deprivation? These questions will be the subject of future studies by the group" 

again - i did not write this.  working on re-finding the source
  

The art and science of Pumpkin carving

i made this presentation, and it was so much fun -i hope to add to it

Xiangjun Shi "why do i study physics"

Fantastic Art and science project!


" Xiangjun Shi recently graduated from Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design in physics and animation. In Why Do I Study Physics? she uses one of her passions to explain the other, in a short animation that starts out simple but eventually pokes at some of the great mysteries of the universe. Why Do I Study Physics? was Shi's RISD graduation project, and took home the jury award at MetroCAF 2013, NYC ACM SIGGRAPH's college computer animation festival." http://io9.com/an-animator-explains-why-she-studies-physics-in-a-marve-1452993581

This is what I believe in

Excellent example of right brain learning

I think this is really a great way to learn that is creative and is not addressed enough as a method of learning in schools.  It might really be where education is failing us by not addressing these issues of integrated learning methods.

Inspired!

Michael Hearst's SONGS FOR UNUSUAL CREATURES - Episode 1 "Aye-aye"

Looking for life? Great web sites

Species New to Science

http://novataxa.blogspot.com/

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE

http://eol.org/

Reflection, perspective, and relative location in art

"The Skewed, Anamorphic Sculptures and Engineered Illusions of Jonty Hurwitz" http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/01/the-skewed-anamorphic-sculptures-and-engineered-illusions-of-jonty-hurwitz/

By distorting the sculpture - the reflection is then assembled as the object we recognize.  I be physicists are loving this!  

Here's a film to see one of his pieces come together - perspective, location...  These would all be fun for the Spy code classes!

Beautiful Viruses

" Luke Jerram, makes exact glass replicas of harmful viruses: HIV, E. Coli, etc....Each replica is about 1,000,000 times the size of the actual virus." - http://imgur.com/gallery/XpU18

This is his Website...  I just can't get enough of this work.  Turning something scary and deadly into a beautiful work of art.... It makes you want to learn about the viruses, not fear them.
I love it when Art does good.
http://www.lukejerram.com/glass/gallery

Suzy Greenberg

R.I.P.