Videos for Science: Journal of Visualized Experiments

Here are two links, here and here, that talk about scientists using video---cheap, easy, do-it-yourself videos---to describe their work and tell others how to do what they do or have done.

This is absolutely wonderful and a great way to communicate one's work.

To begin, a video let's the viewer see and hear what a scientist is thinking and wants to show you. You don't have to be limited to paper and text which are quite good but are static. What's more, videos can be archived and indexed so that you can search through them if you make a library for yourself, or go to a library on-line.

I think this idea is right up there with publishing on-line so that everyone can have access to each other's work. I was reading just a few months ago about how expensive journals are so that many researchers cannot afford them. What's worse, libraries (even university libraries) are starting to limit their subscriptions because of the tremendous cost.

If you go to ArXiv, you'll find a collection of pre-prints that researchers have written and posted there for others to read and for editors to check for publication. In fact, Grigory Perlman, who recently proved The Poincare Conjecture posted his work to that site. Anyone could get it; many did; and each could enjoy his wonderful research. (I looked at his papers and didn't have clue where to even begin. But that's not the point.)

Having these sites, like JOVE (see the link at the top) is a truly wonderful beginning to getting research out to others for review, comments, and general dissemination.

(Hat tip: Ilachina)

P.S. There is always the chance for people to abuse these sites and post junk. It happens but I think that generally others recognize the junk and filter it away.

Mapping the Internet by Function, Not just connnectivitiy

It's the first study to look at how the Internet is organized in terms of function, as well as how it's connected, says Shai Carmi, a physicist who took part in the research at the Bar Ilan University, in Israel. "This gives the most complete picture of the Internet available today," he says.

While efforts have been made previously to plot the topological structure in terms of the connections between Internet nodes--computer networks or Internet Service Providers that act as relay stations for carrying information about the Net--none have taken into account the role that these connections play. "Some nodes may not be as important as other nodes," says Carmi.

The researchers' results depict the Internet as consisting of a dense core of 80 or so critical nodes surrounded by an outer shell of 5,000 sparsely connected, isolated nodes that are very much dependent upon this core. Separating the core from the outer shell are approximately 15,000 peer-connected and self-sufficient nodes.

(Hat tip: Ilachina)

Art of sizes

This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 426,000 cell phones retired every day. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. My underlying desire is to emphasize the role of the individual in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is a work in progress, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.

~chris jordan, Seattle, 2007

When you view these beautifully expressive images note the zooms and how the zoomed out views relate to the zoomed in pieces or pixels, if you will. These are a wonderful example of how you can build images with other images.