If You’ve Ever Watched A Rocket Launch, You’ve Probably Noticed The Billowing Clouds Around The Launch

Snowflakes from William Scoresby’s des Jüngern Tagebuch einer reise auf den Wallfischfang, (Hamburg: F. Perthes, 1825), the German translation of Journal of a voyage to the northern whale-fishery.

Scoresby was an Arctic explorer with interests in meteorology and navigation, who led an Arctic exploration in the early 1800s to the area around Greenland.  

The Myth of Prometheus

Before the creation of humanity, the Greek gods won a great battle against a race of giants called the Titans. Most Titans were destroyed or driven to the eternal hell of Tartarus. But the Titan Prometheus, whose name means foresight, persuaded his brother Epimetheus to fight with him on the side of the gods. 

As thanks, Zeus entrusted the brothers with the task of creating all living things. Epimetheus was to distribute the gifts of the gods among the creatures. To some, he gave flight; to others, the ability to move through water or race through grass. He gave the beasts glittering scales, soft fur, and sharp claws.

Meanwhile, Prometheus shaped the first humans out of mud. He formed them in the image of the gods, but Zeus decreed they were too remain mortal and worship the inhabitants of Mount Olympus from below. Zeus deemed humans subservient creatures vulnerable to the elements and dependent on the gods for protection. However, Prometheus envisioned his crude creations with a greater purpose. So when Zeus asked him to decide how sacrifices would be made, the wily Prometheus planned a trick that would give humans some advantage. He killed a bull and divided it into two parts to present to Zeus. On one side, he concealed the succulent flesh and skin under the unappealing belly of the animal. On the other, he hid the bones under a thick layer of fat. When Zeus chose the seemingly best portion for himself, he was outraged at Prometheus’s deception. 

Fuming, Zeus forbade the use of fire on Earth, whether to cook meat or for any other purpose. But Prometheus refused to see his creations denied this resource. And so, he scaled Mount Olympus to steal fire from the workshop of Hephaestus and Athena. He hid the flames in a hollow fennel stalk and brought it safely down to the people. This gave them the power to harness nature for their own benefit and ultimately dominate the natural order. 

With fire, humans could care for themselves with food and warmth. But they could also forge weapons and wage war. Prometheus’s flames acted as a catalyst for the rapid progression of civilization. When Zeus looked down at this scene, he realized what had happened. Prometheus had once again wounded his pride and subverted his authority. 

Furious, Zeus imposed a brutal punishment. Prometheus was to be chained to a cliff for eternity. Each day, he would be visited by a vulture who would tear out his liver and each night his liver would grow back to be attacked again in the morning. Although Prometheus remained in perpetual agony, he never expressed regret at his act of rebellion. His resilience in the face of oppression made him a beloved figure in mythology. He was also celebrated for his mischievous and inquisitive spirit, and for the knowledge, progress, and power he brought to human hands. 

He’s also a recurring figure in art and literature. In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s lyrical drama “Prometheus Unbound,” the author imagines Prometheus as a romantic hero who escapes and continues to spread empathy and knowledge. Of his protagonist, Shelley wrote, “Prometheus is the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.” His wife Mary envisaged Prometheus as a more cautionary figure and subtitled her novel “Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus.” This suggests the damage of corrupting the natural order and remains relevant to the ethical questions surrounding science and technology today. As hero, rebel, or trickster, Prometheus remains a symbol of our capacity to capture the powers of nature, and ultimately, he reminds us of the potential of individual acts to ignite the world.

From the TED-Ed Lesson The myth of Prometheus - Iseult Gillespie

Animation by Léa Krawczyk ( @lea–krawczyk )

GUYS https://twitter.com/AltNatParkSer/status/824054953404669953 http://www.scientistsmarchonwashington.com/ THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE IS IN OPEN REBELLION

To keep pain in check, count down

Diverse cognitive strategies affect our perception of pain. Studies by LMU neuroscientist Enrico Schulz and colleagues have linked the phenomenon to the coordinated activity of neural circuits located in different brain areas.

Is the heat still bearable, or should I take my hand off the hotplate? Before the brain can react appropriately to pain, it must evaluate and integrate sensory, cognitive and emotional factors that modulate the perception and processing of the sensation itself. This task requires the exchange of information between different regions of the brain. New studies have confirmed that there is a link between the subjective experience of pain and the relative levels of neural activity in functional structures in various sectors of the brain. However, these investigations have been carried out primarily in contexts in which the perception of pain was intensified either by emotional factors or by consciously focusing attention on the painful stimulus. Now, LMU neuroscientist Enrico Schulz, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Oxford, has asked how cognitive strategies that affect one’s subjective perception of pain influence the patterns of neural activity in the brain.

In the study, 20 experimental subjects were exposed to a painful cold stimulus. They were asked to adopt one of three approaches to attenuating the pain: (a) counting down from 1000 in steps of 7, (b) thinking of something pleasant or beautiful, and (c) persuading themselves – by means of autosuggestion – that the stimulus was not really that bad. During the experimental sessions, the subjects were hooked up to a 7T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner to visualise the patterns of neural activity in the brain, which were later analysed in detail.

In order to assess the efficacy of the different coping strategies, participants were also asked to evaluate the subjective intensity of the pain on a scale of 0 to 100. The results revealed that the countdown strategy was the most effective of the three methods. “This task obviously requires such a high level of concentration that it distracts the subject’s attention significantly from the sensation of pain. In fact some of our subjects managed to reduce the perceived intensity of pain by 50%,” says Schulz. “One participant later reported that she had successfully adopted the strategy during the most painful phase of childbirth.”

In a previous paper published in the journal Cortex in 2019, the same team had already shown that all three strategies help to attenuate the perception of pain, and that each strategy evoked a different pattern of neural activity. In the new study, Schulz and his collaborators carried out a more detailed analysis of the MRI scans, for which they divided the brain into 360 regions. “Our aim was to determine which areas in the brain must work together in order to successfully reduce the perceived intensity of the pain,” Schulz explains. “Interestingly, no single region or network that is activated by all three strategies could be identified. Instead, under each experimental condition, neural circuits in different brain regions act in concert to varying extents.”

The attenuation of pain is clearly a highly complex process, which requires a cooperative response that involves many regions distributed throughout the brain. Analysis of the response to the countdown technique revealed close coordination between different parts of the insular cortex, among other patterns. The imaginal distraction method, i.e. calling something picturesque or otherwise pleasing to mind, works only when it evokes intensive flows of information between the frontal lobes. Since these structures are known to be important control centres in the brain, the authors believe that engagement of the imaginative faculty may require a greater degree of control, because the brain needs to search through more ‘compartments’ – to find the right memory traces, for instance. Comparatively speaking, counting backwards stepwise – even in such awkward steps – is likely to be a more highly constrained task. “To cope with pain, the brain makes use of a recipe that also works well in other contexts,” says Anne Stankewitz, a co-author of the new paper: “success depends on effective teamwork.” Her team now plans to test whether their latest results can be usefully applied to patients with chronic pain.

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.

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The U.S. Women’s Team win gold at the 2014 Nanning World Championships

Tuz Gölü - Cereal  / WORDS & PHOTOS: Peter Edel

FOR THE AMERICAN COLOUR FIELD PAINTER BARNETT NEWMAN, THE EMPTY, BOUNDLESS LANDSCAPE ENHANCED AN INDIVIDUAL’S SENSE OF PRESENCE WITHIN THEM. THE TUZ GÖLÜ, THE SALT LAKE LOCATED IN THE CORE OF TURKEY’S ANATOLIAN PENINSULA, IS ONE OF THE PLACES IN THE WORLD WHERE THIS UNDERSTANDING IS EXPERIENCED MOST PROFOUNDLY.

Flowers

My Neighbor Totoro | Tonari no Totoro (1988, Japan)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki Cinematographer: Mark Henley

Scientists report the first scientific results from NASA’s Juno mission, now in orbit around Jupiter.

This week, a suite of 46 separate scientific papers describe different aspects of the giant planet Jupiter, from its massive polar cyclones, to its complex magnetic field, to its unique radiation environment. The papers mark the first full scientific results from NASA’s Juno mission, which arrived in orbit around Jupiter last summer. Later this July, the craft is slated to overfly the planet’s Great Red Spot, bringing back still more data. Juno program scientist Jared Espley and Juno radiation monitoring investigation lead Heidi Becker join Ira to sum up some of the Jovian surprises, as well as give a preview of what still lies ahead for the Juno mission. Listen here to learn more.

[Photos by NASA/JPL/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Justin Cowart/Alexis Tranchandon/Solaris]