Alice King Chatham.

A helmet from the 1961 Mercury spacesuit. The space helmet wouldn’t be the same had it not been for Alice King Chatham’s contributions. NASA.

A helmet from the 1961 Mercury spacesuit. The space helmet wouldn’t be the same had it not been for Alice King Chatham’s contributions. NASA.

Who is the real Alice King Chatham, sculptor of helmets worn by monkey astronauts?

That was the question posed to a panel of four celebrities—one of whom was Betty White—in the August 31, 1964 episode of the game show To Tell The Truth. The host, Bud Collyer, presented three people to the panel, all of whom claimed to be King Chatham.

Straight out of the past, here’s that episode of To Tell the Truth. I remember watching that show when I was a sproglet. King Chatham is the last contestant.

During the height of 1960s space and flight exploration in the United States, Alice King Chatham worked behind the scenes creating partial-pressure pilot suits, test dummies, oxygen masks, space beds, and helmets for NASA and the U.S. Air Force. She even helped design suits for the television show Star Trek.

In the early 1940s, King Chatham was working as an artist and sculptor when she was recruited by the Air Force to help make the first successful oxygen breathing masks worn by all American World War II pilots. She was involved in an array of major experiments, studies, and projects, from creating space helmets for the 1963 first man-in-space program Project Mercury to designing prototype suits for monkeys that flew in the Aerobee sub-orbital rocket tests during the 1940s.

It was not uncommon for female artists to be recruited into the U.S. Army for their skills during wartime. Around 1943, King Chatham had been sculpting ducks, dogs, and horses at the Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio, when she received a request from the head of the anthropology unit at Wright Field’s Aero-Medical Laboratory, Francis Randall. “As an artist and sculptress she understood the human body,” reported Lee Street for The Baltimore Sun in 1953.

[…]

King Chatham became an expert of the flight helmet and the lab’s equipment specialist for personal protective gear. She is credited with developing a new pressure helmet that improved an iteration of the 1946 S-1 pressure flight suits, and special ear counter-pressure devices.

Scientists came to King Chatham with a list of different criteria for different kinds of helmets—one with a breathing tube, a microphone, and an opening for liquid feeding. She would, over several months, fashion experimental models out of rubber, plastics, and fabrics.

 “The professional men at the Laboratory admit they don’t know how she does it,” Street wrote.

The full story of King Chatham’s contributions is at Atlas Obscura.

Naked Owls.

Anan Kaewkhammul / Shutterstock.

Anan Kaewkhammul / Shutterstock.

Owls are, of course, amazing. They can rotate their head almost 360 degrees, they have lopsided ears – all the better for hearing you with, my dear – and are collectively known as a parliament.

The Internet, however, is freaking out at what they look like naked.

Twitter user Dana Schwartz is obviously of curious, and brave, mind as she googled the now immortal words “what owls look like without feathers”, which produced this image that you now cannot unsee.

People had all manner of fun in the tweet stream, happily obliging with photos of other naked beings:

A hairless hedgehog. That’s something to curse about!

Via IFLScience!

I can sort of add to the nekkid animals. This is Rune, (pronounced Rooh neh) who has been hairless most of his short life, and just now has developed a very fine, sparse coat of sorts. There are two others like him, but Rune grabbed my heart from the start. He’s a sweet, shy boy, with a penchant for perching on top of my head, much like his grandmother, Grace. Somewhere in that line, there was a hairless rat or two.

Rune1 Rune2 Rune4

The Fine Art of Calling Bullshit.

Carl T. Bergstrom (left) and Jevin West, of the U. of Washington, want to teach students how to survive the avalanche of false or misleading data shaken loose by shifts in media, technology, and politics.

Carl T. Bergstrom (left) and Jevin West, of the U. of Washington, want to teach students how to survive the avalanche of false or misleading data shaken loose by shifts in media, technology, and politics.

Facts and figures are like cow pastures. Unless you squint, you can’t always tell how full of bullshit they are.

Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin West, a pair of scientists at the University of Washington, think it’s time to arm students with boots and shovels. They have published the outline of a course, titled “Calling Bullshit,” which would try to teach how to spot bad data and misleading graphs at a time when bending statistics has become a popular art form.

“Pending approval from the administrative powers-that-be at the University of Washington, we hope to offer the seminar in the near future,” they wrote on a website they built for the course. “In the meantime, connoisseurs of bullshit may enjoy the course syllabus, readings, and case studies that we have lovingly curated.”

The Chronicle caught up with Mr. Bergstrom, a biologist, and Mr. West, an information scientist, to talk about their course.

The full interview is here. All I can say is that we need these courses everywhere. On street corners, even.

I notice a poster of a squid over the door – this must be a Cthulhuian plot!

Nano Lord Voldemort.

587eef62ea4f7.image

Auburn Engineering graduate student Armin VahidMohammadi won first place in a national research organization’s Science as Art competition for his depiction of an engineered nanomaterial as a character from the “Harry Potter” movie series.

VahidMohammadi, a doctoral student in materials engineering, created a digitally enhanced image of his research that bears a resemblance to Lord Voldemort, the villain in the “Harry Potter” series. After submitting the image for consideration to the Materials Research Society’s Science as Art competition, he won first place out of 168 submissions. The award comes with a $400 cash prize.

“I am honored to have my work showcased and recognized by such a prestigious organization,” VahidMohammadi said. “It was exciting that the competition allowed me to connect materials science with popular culture in a way that the general public can appreciate.”

Held since 2006, the Science as Art competition offers materials engineers and students the opportunity to transform their research into images renowned for their aesthetic qualities.

Using a scanning electron microscope, VahidMohammadi was examining particles of an engineered nanomaterial when he noticed a particular particle that resembled Lord Voldemort. He colorized the image and digitally enhanced it by adding eyes and teeth.

The particle pictured is known as Ti2C, which is a member of a family of two-dimensional, layered materials called MXenes. Ti2C has a wide array of applications, including as electrode materials for batteries and supercapacitors. The particle shown in the image is five microns in length, or roughly 10 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

Very cool work, this! It would make a great poster.

Via OANOW.

In Defense of Carbon Dioxide.

Physicist William Happer arrives for a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York City on Jan. 13. (Albin Lohr-Jones/European Pressphoto Agency/Pool).

Physicist William Happer arrives for a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York City on Jan. 13. (Albin Lohr-Jones/European Pressphoto Agency/Pool).

Trump met with crank physicist William Happer, the climate change denier’s climate change denier. Happer sings the wonders of carbon dioxide, extolling its virtues at every opportunity. He doesn’t get every little thing wrong, but he denies the big picture, human responsibility, and the rather serious question of balance, and what happens when instead of balance, you have a tipping point. What we have here is yet another omen of our impending doom.

…In a 2011 essay in the journal First Things, Happer further argued that “the ‘climate crusade’ is one characterized by true believers, opportunists, cynics, money-hungry governments, manipulators of various types — even children’s crusades — all based on contested science and dubious claims.”

The essay triggered an in-depth rebuttal from Michael MacCracken, a climate scientist who formerly directed the U.S. Global Change Research Program in the Bill Clinton administration, and who characterized it as “so misleading that, in my view, it merits a paragraph-by-paragraph response.”

The meeting may be most noteworthy as an example of how Trump plans to get scientific advice — through meetings with people whose views are not necessarily part of the mainstream. It’s not a model that most scientists will approve of.

Trump has met individually not only with Happer, but also with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose views on the safety of vaccines have been rejected by scientific authorities. The meeting has caused alarm in the medical community.

The president-elect has not yet named a presidential science adviser.

This story is covered by The Washington Post, Gizmodo, and Raw Story.

Dinosaurs: Embryonic Tooth Age.

A hatchling Protoceratops andrewsi fossil from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Credit M. Ellison/American Museum of Natural History.

A hatchling Protoceratops andrewsi fossil from the Gobi Desert in Mongolia. Credit M. Ellison/American Museum of Natural History.

Exciting new information about the reproductive life of nonavian dinosaurs.

For decades now, the drumbeat of dinosaur news has been their similarity to birds. They were warmblooded! They had feathers! And they’re still around, because birds are actually dinosaurs.

All true, but those that were nonavian dinosaurs, as they are now called, were not all beak and tweet. They were closely related to other living reptiles like crocodiles, and new findings about how long their eggs took to hatch bring that point home.

Scientists reported on Monday that by using a new technique on exceedingly rare fossils of unhatched dinosaur embryos, they determined that those embryos took twice as long to hatch as bird eggs of a similar size. The embryo of a large duck-billed dinosaur took at least six months to hatch, and the eggs of larger dinosaurs may have taken even longer.

The long incubation times complicate thinking about dinosaur behavior. While some kinds of dinosaurs may have tended their eggs and young, for others the difficulty of hanging around for most of a year to watch buried eggs would have been too much.

The NY Times has the full story. The PNAS abstract is here.

The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss.

A YouTube video from North Dakota’s new Gov. Doug Burgum. More of the same about Standing Rock.

A YouTube video from North Dakota’s new Gov. Doug Burgum. More of the same about Standing Rock.

Damn. Think about what was possible: A governor who is framing his entire administration on innovation just dismissed the most disruptive force in his state’s recent history. That is what Standing Rock is about. Instead of saying, “What can we learn from this? What can we do together?” The new governor relied on the screen saver that was there before; the idea that powerful forces will roll over the tribe and build the Dakota Access Pipeline without interference. Thank you.

Burgum also scratched away at an old story: The Obama administration created this problem.

But his larger message is that the state of North Dakota and its corporate partners are more powerful than any tribal government. Instead of a pause, a moment to engage in a government-to-government dialogue, the new governor emphatically says the pipeline will get built soon. No. Matter. What.

“Make no mistake, this infrastructure is good for our economy,” the governor said in his YouTube video. “And it’s the safest way to transport North Dakota products. Failure to finish it would send a chilling signal to those in any industry who wish invest in our state and play by the rules.”

[…]

The new governor could have reset the law enforcement battle lines too. Nope. “As a result of the Obama administration’s refusal to uphold the rule of law on federally owned land, both our citizens and local and state law enforcement have been put in harm’s way,” he said. “These actions are putting daily demands on the scarce resources of our state and local government.”

Those daily demands are because the state of North Dakota made it so. Pick a word: defuse, de-escalate, negotiate. There were so many better alternatives, ones that were dismissed in favor of sending in the cavalry. I have interviewed many government officials over the years that successfully reduced tension instead of using the police powers of a state. In every test the state failed in this regard and the new governor is following the same path.

I had hopes that Gov. Burgum would see the potential of the Standing Rock story as one that could make North Dakota a beacon. Think about this: This moment in history has brought indigenous people together in a way that’s unprecedented. And the world is paying attention to that. What an amazing opportunity, something that could stir the imagination of investors, entrepreneurs, and governments. Potential partners in a state that found a solution by working with tribes to solve an intractable problem.

The former governor blamed social media for this global perception. But that misses the point that the Standing Rock Tribe owns the story. And that won’t change because the new governor posts a video on his account. The problem is not social media. It’s the message that the State of North Dakota will use the rule of law, the police power of a state, to roll over a tribal nation. It’s a message of brute force instead of inspiration.

Same old tired shit. Same old tired white privilege. Nothing ever changes. Mark Trahant’s full column at ICTMN.

Odd Searches Lead to Cool Things.

Sometimes, search strings on my stats page catch my attention. Yesterday, it was “Republican Nazis will burn in hell.” Still haven’t figured that one out, but quite honestly, that’s not a remotely satisfactory thought. There is no hell, and even if all that nonsense were true, xtianity has that get out of hell free card, with the last minute repentance jazz. At any rate, I’d prefer nazis, republican or otherwise, to be sidelined and prevented from doing any damage right here and now. To hell with waiting for hell. And what kind of person gets enjoyment from that sort of vision? I’m not that sadistic.

Today, the search string “rainbow water” caught my eye. Somewhat afraid this might be yet another new age scam, I headed for a search of my own. I didn’t find anything dubious, but I did find something cool:

One of these days, I’ll have to do this. I don’t have a matching set of glasses, though. I like having a cupboard full of odd ones. There’s a step by step at the site, along with an explanation of density.

Sugar Rainbow.

Wild Gears.

Who doesn’t love Spirograph? Ars Technica has an article about Wild Gears – spirograph to next level.

Spirographs were invented in the late nineteenth century by mathematician and electrical engineer Bruno Abakanowicz, but didn’t become a popular toy until the 1960s. They allow you to create a wide range of kaleidoscopic designs by putting your pen into one of many holes in a set of interlocking gears, then using your pen to push the gears around an outer ring. I hadn’t used one since elementary school, but Bleackley’s passion reminded me of how satisfying it was to watch those amazing designs appear under my pencil.

The best part is that Bleackley wasn’t kidding with his humble boast. He’s the creator of Wild Gears, a company that makes several spirograph sets that are guaranteed to please your mathy, artsy, weirdness-loving mind. He prototypes his acrylic gears using a laser cutter at the Vancouver Hack Space, and fans can order his kits through the Ponoko store.

Via Ars Technica.

And a bonus – if you feel the need to spirograph right now, you can, online with Inspirograph!

Gas Station Moon.

moon

Yesterday, the president-elect appointed private space advocate and businessman Charles Miller to the NASA transition team.

[…]

Last year, Miller led research that concluded private and international partnerships could make it 90 percent cheaper for NASA to set up a permanent, crewed base on the moon. The lunar base could theoretically be used to mine water from the moon’s craters and split it into hydrogen and oxygen—rocket fuel—to sell to private companies. By turning the moon into a gas station, there are hopes that these mines could make space exploration cheaper and easier.

Oh, there’s an idea, let’s get busy destroying the moon while we finish killing our earth. Yep, that’s bound to work. The colonial mindset, it never dies. Like mindless termites, gnawing and chewing through everything, with destructive glee. I have nothing outside a gigantic, near-fatal eyeroll.

Via Raw Story.

Cool Stuff Friday.

The Sleeping Gypsy 1897, by Henri Rousseau. Courtesy Wikimedia.

The Sleeping Gypsy 1897, by Henri Rousseau. Courtesy Wikimedia.

A reflection on the lost art of lying down by Bernd Brunner. What do you do to put yourself in a reflective, unhurried state of mind?

ant
The Queen Does Not Rule: The ant colony has often served as a metaphor for human order and hierarchy. But real ant society is radical to its core.

We know now that ants do not perform as specialised factory workers. Instead ants switch tasks. An ant’s role changes as it grows older and as changing conditions shift the colony’s needs. An ant that feeds the larvae one week might go out to get food the next. Yet in an ant colony, no one is in charge or tells another what to do. So what determines which ant does which task, and when ants switch roles?

The colony is not a monarchy. The queen merely lays the eggs. Like many natural systems without central control, ant societies are in fact organised not by division of labour but by a distributed process, in which an ant’s social role is a response to interactions with other ants. In brief encounters, ants use their antennae to smell one another, or to detect a chemical that another ant has recently deposited. Taken in the aggregate, these simple interactions between ants allow colonies to adjust the numbers performing each task and to respond to the changing world. This social coordination occurs without any individual ant making any assessment of what needs to be done.

One of nature’s most physiologically fascinating creatures, mantis shrimp are not only the fastest attackers in the animal kingdom, but they also possess what might be the world’s most interesting and impressive set of eyes. Each mantis shrimp eye has three ‘pupils’, with receptors for 12 distinct colours – yet another world record. But perhaps the most amazing aspect of mantis shrimp eyes are their ability to detect polarised light – largely invisible to humans – which they use to signal to other mantis shrimp that a burrow is occupied from afar, preventing close-quarters showdowns to the death. Taking the mantis shrimp’s lead, scientists are hoping to use a camera that detects light polarisation to catch certain kinds of cancer early.

Via Aeon.

Dance dance automation: music from the factory floor.