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Behind a TED-Ed Lesson: Animation + Inspiration

To celebrate George Seurat’s birthday today, we thought we’d do a deep dive behind the scenes of one of our animated lessons, How do schools of fish swim in harmony?, which is about the concept of ‘emergence’ and whose animated style just so happens to have been largely influenced by the paintings of George Seurat and his contemporaries.

Emergence refers to the spontaneous creation of sophisticated behaviors and functions from large groups of simple elements, and can be used to explain the movements of ants, fish, and birds, as well as how the tiny cells in your brain give rise to the complex thoughts, memories, and consciousness that are you.

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, George Seurat (1884–86)

It’s kind of like a pointillist painting. When you zoom in real close, it’s just a collection of chaotic brush strokes. But take a few steps back, and you’ll see that all of those brush strokes are working together to illustrate a complex and detailed scene.

Pointillism stems from Impressionism, and depending on the artist’s technique, the size of the brush strokes vary, but are always visible. For example, Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night uses larger brush strokes in the night sky. Both the above and below concept designs show the animator of this lesson testing out how different brushstrokes interact to create depth within a scene. She decided that the swirling waters would make sense as large brushstrokes, which also offered contrast to allow the small fish to stand out.

George Seurat also employed a technique called ‘divisionism’, sometimes known as ‘chromoluminarism’, in which colors were separated into individual dots or patches which interacted optically. So, rather than relying on mixing colors, painters like Seurat and Paul Signac juxtaposed contrasting colors to allow for optical mixing - which in theory would produce more vibrant and pure colors than the traditional process of mixing pigments.

Circus Sideshow (Parade de Cirque), George Seurat (1887–88)

While designing this TED-Ed lesson, George Seurat and Paul Signac’s paintings provided inspiration not just for the brushstroke technique, but also for the color palette.

This GIF of the brain and it’s neural connections draws many of its colors from Seurat’s circus series palette, while the brighter colors - such as the ones used in the title GIF above - are drawn from the more vibrant colors commonly used by Paul Signac, like in the painting below.

Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde (La Bonne-Mère), Marseilles, Paul Signac (1905-06)

Animating this lesson was an opportunity to renew a sense of wonder in our ever complex universe, whether studying it up close or from afar. We hope that watching it might do the same for you!

From the TED-Ed Lesson How do schools of fish swim in harmony? - Nathan S. Jacobs

Animation by TED-Ed // Lisa LaBracio

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Director - Peter Weir, Cinematography - John Seale

“Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Don’t be resigned to that. Break out!“

Cathedrals Beach, Galicia

waaavess

New theory explains how beta waves arise in the brain

Beta rhythms, or waves of brain activity with an approximately 20 Hz frequency, accompany vital fundamental behaviors such as attention, sensation and motion and are associated with some disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Scientists have debated how the spontaneous waves emerge, and they have not yet determined whether the waves are just a byproduct of activity, or play a causal role in brain functions. Now in a new paper led by Brown University neuroscientists, they have a specific new mechanistic explanation of beta waves to consider.

The new theory, presented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the product of several lines of evidence: external brainwave readings from human subjects, sophisticated computational simulations and detailed electrical recordings from two mammalian model organisms.

“A first step to understanding beta’s causal role in behavior or pathology, and how to manipulate it for optimal function, is to understand where it comes from at the cellular and circuit level,” said corresponding author Stephanie Jones, research associate professor of neuroscience at Brown University. “Our study combined several techniques to address this question and proposed a novel mechanism for spontaneous neocortical beta. This discovery suggests several possible mechanisms through which beta may impact function.”

Making waves

The team started by using external magnetoencephalography (MEG) sensors to observe beta waves in the human somatosensory cortex, which processes sense of touch, and the inferior frontal cortex, which is associated with higher cognition.

They closely analyzed the beta waves, finding they lasted at most a mere 150 milliseconds and had a characteristic wave shape, featuring a large, steep valley in the middle of the wave.

The question from there was what neural activity in the cortex could produce such waves. The team attempted to recreate the waves using a computer model of a cortical circuitry, made up of a multilayered cortical column that contained multiple cell types across different layers. Importantly, the model was designed to include a cell type called pyramidal neurons, whose activity is thought to dominate the human MEG recordings.

They found that they could closely replicate the shape of the beta waves in the model by delivering two kinds of excitatory synaptic stimulation to distinct layers in the cortical columns of cells: one that was weak and broad in duration to the lower layers, contacting spiny dendrites on the pyramidal neurons close to the cell body; and another that was stronger and briefer, lasting 50 milliseconds (i.e., one beta period), to the upper layers, contacting dendrites farther away from the cell body. The strong distal drive created the valley in the waveform that determined the beta frequency.

Meanwhile they tried to model other hypotheses about how beta waves emerge, but found those unsuccessful.

With a model of what to look for, the team then tested it by looking for a real biological correlate of it in two animal models. The team analyzed measurements in the cortex of mice and rhesus macaques and found direct confirmation that this kind of stimulation and response occurred across the cortical layers in the animal models.

“The ultimate test of the model predictions is to record the electrical signals inside the brain,” Jones said. “These recordings supported our model predictions.”

Beta in the brain

Neither the computer models nor the measurements traced the source of the excitatory synaptic stimulations that drive the pyramidal neurons to produce the beta waves, but Jones and her co-authors posit that they likely come from the thalamus, deeper in the brain. Projections from the thalamus happen to be in exactly the right places needed to deliver signals to the right positions on the dendrites of pyramidal neurons in the cortex. The thalamus is also known to send out bursts of activity that last 50 milliseconds, as predicted by their theory.

With a new biophysical theory of how the waves emerge, the researchers hope the field can now investigate whether beta rhythms affect or merely reflect behavior and disease. Jones’s team in collaboration with Professor of Neuroscience Christopher Moore at Brown is now testing predictions from the theory that beta may decrease sensory or motor information processing functions in the brain. New hypotheses are that the inputs that create beta may also stimulate inhibitory neurons in the top layers of the cortex, or that they may may saturate the activity of the pyramidal neurons, thereby reducing their ability to process information; or that the thalamic bursts that give rise to beta occupy the thalamus to the point where it doesn’t pass information along to the cortex.

Figuring this out could lead to new therapies based on manipulating beta, Jones said.

“An active and growing field of neuroscience research is trying to manipulate brain rhythms for optimal function with stimulation techniques,” she said. “We hope that our novel finding on the neural origin of beta will help guide research to manipulate beta, and possibly other rhythms, for improved function in sensorimotor pathologies.”

Mickey Mouse Remastered 

1928 vs. 2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VdAV0Yp_Gg

“I want to empower women through dance. I think you can build confidence through movement. When a woman starts moving her body, and becomes comfortable with herself, and realizes that she can do the steps — it connects back to life. Because all of life is movement. Technically we’re dancing every day. And it doesn’t matter how you look. It matters how you move.”

Chances are you or somebody you know has recently become the owner of an Instant Pot, the multifunction electric pressure cooker that can produce fork-tender pot roasts in less than an hour, as well as brown meat, cook beans without soaking, and even do the job of a rice cooker or crockpot. The Instant Pot­­ isn’t advertised on TV or in the newspapers, and yet it’s become a viral marketing success story, with owners often describing themselves as “addicts” or “cult members.” That’s the kind of word-of-mouth publicity Instant Pot founders dreamed of when they first began designing the countertop appliances.

The Instant Pot electric pressure cooker has been around since 2010, but really became the buzz during the last six months of 2016. While the company’s electric pressure cookers are sold at Wal-Mart, Target and Kohl’s, the bulk of its sales come from Amazon, driven by social media. Deep discounts on Amazon Prime Day and again on Black Friday, along with the viral online sharing of these sales, turned Instant Pot into a household name. With 215,000 units sold on Prime Day alone, the Instant Pot Duo is Amazon’s top-selling item in the U.S. market. Not bad for a company that does no TV or print advertising and only recently began the process of hiring a marketing agency.

Not Just A Crock: The Viral Word-Of-Mouth Success Of Instant Pot

Photo: Grace Hwang Lynch

Dutch trains now all powered by wind energy

All Dutch trains have become 100% powered by electricity generated by wind energy, the national railway company NS has said, making it a world’s first.

One windmill running for an hour can power a train for 120 miles, the companies said. Dutch electricity company Eneco won a tender offered by NS two years ago and the two companies signed a 10-year deal setting January 2018 as the date by which all NS trains should run on wind energy. ‘We in fact reached our goal a year earlier than planned,” said NS spokesman Ton Boon, adding that an increase in the number of wind farms across the country and off the coast of the Netherlands had helped NS achieve its aim.

They hope to reduce the energy used per passenger by a further 35% by 2020 compared with 2005.

Theodore Isaac Rubin, American Psychiatrist (via books-n-quotes)

Have you considered that if you don’t make waves, nobody including yourself will know that you are alive?

When a porous solid retains its properties in liquid form

Known for their exceptional porosity that enables the trapping or transport of molecules, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) take the form of a powder, which makes them difficult to format. For the first time, an international team led by scientists from the Institut de recherche de Chimie Paris (CNRS/Chimie ParisTech ), and notably involving Air Liquide, has evidenced the surprising ability of a type of MOF to retain its porous properties in the liquid and then glass state. Published on October 9, 2017 in Nature Materials website, these findings open the way towards new industrial applications.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) constitute a particularly promising class of materials. Their exceptional porosity makes it possible to store and separate large quantities of gas, or to act as a catalyst for chemical reactions. However, their crystalline structure implies that they are produced in powder form, which is difficult to store and use for industrial applications. For the first time, a team of scientists from the CNRS, Chimie ParisTech, Cambridge University, Air Liquide and the ISIS (UK) and Argonne (US) synchrotrons has shown that the properties of a zeolitic MOF were unexpectedly conserved in the liquid phase (which does not generally favor porosity). Then, after cooling and solidification, the glass obtained adopted a disordered, non-crystalline structure that also retained the same properties in terms of porosity. These results will enable the shaping and use of these materials much more efficiently than in powder form.

Read more.