


What does it take to see the entire Sun?






via NASA



An inside look into some sweet 3-D magic

Check out the above video for a really interesting look into the incredibly complex and beautiful visual effects in Tron 2.0.  An insane amount of the movie is created using computer graphics, including most of the environments, the coolest parts  of the battle scenes, and even some of the main characters.

It takes a ridiculous amount of effort and detail to come up with each scene, and this gives a pretty interesting idea as to some of the steps that are involved in bringing together a movie this visually rich and unique.  Almost equally as impressive is that some of the stunts are actually done by human beings as well, they're only enhanced for extra eye-candy dazzle.  (for a quick e-digression, here's the wikipedia article on "tricking" aka throwing yourself in the midair and twisting about as though caught in an invisible washing machine).

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this beautiful look into the underbelly of Tron.  It may be a completely fantastical view of what the inside of a computer looks like (it's also beautiful, just in a slightly less violent way), but I certainly can't complain about colorful explosions and magical flying motorbikes...

(For those of you who haven't seen the movie, you may want to hold off unless you're willing to see a spoiler or two)


The world’s coolest magnifying glass




via Bang Goes the Theory


Simplicity and Complexity are two sides of the same coin

I recently came across this fascinating TED talk by Eric Berlow, a scientist that specializes in complex systems ranging from ecological networks to the political spectrum.

As someone who's job is to understand the interconnected nature of complex systems, he's got an insight into our world that we'd all benefit from learning...luckily that insight has been packaged into a 3 minute presentation!

It's often easy to get mired in the multidudes of information that are presented to us each day, but it's important to remember that underneath that jumbled mess of data is often a beautifully simplistic trend that can explain most of the effects that we're trying to understand.  

Take a look at this short presentation, and think about how you might be able to pull the simple out of the complex in your own life.



Myosin, live and uncut!

The above video may not look all that clear or understandable (I feel like I'm watching a tiny bug walking along a vine or something), but in reality this is an incredibly interesting (and much tinier) video than one might assume.  What you see above you is a picture of a Myosin molecule walking along an actin chain.  It has been filmed by a group of Japanese scientists from Kanazawa University (in collaboration with a few others) using a technique called high-speed atomic force microscopy.

For those of you unfamiliar with molecular biology, myosin is a molecule that is pervasive in all multi-cellular organisms.  It serves a wide range of functions, although my personal experience with it has been (as usual) in the nervous system.

(to make the following section a bit easier on those unfamiliar with brain anatomy, here's a short and informative video)

Within the brain, myosin is often used to transport materials from the cell body of neurons down the axon to their terminal.  Basically, many neurons "package" neurotransmitters at their soma (the bulky center of a cell), but they need to get these materials to the end of their axons where they can be released into neuronal synapses.  They accomplish this by attaching the materials to myosin, which then methodically crawls up actin fibers that extend throughout the axon.  In this step-by-step fashion, cells are able to transport proteins, neurotransmitters, and other materials internally so that they can function properly.

It's a bit hard to believe that anything so tiny could act so similarly to the way we all move about the world, but the proof is in the protein, as they say!

via Nature