Yesterday, I discovered my place in the world as I watched dinosaurs roam the room in front of me. It may sound like I was under the influence of psychedelic drugs, but I was actually in the Attenborough Studio at London's Natural History Museum, watching the new interactive film Who do you think you really are?
The film, which launches today, is presented by David Attenborough and addresses the evolutionary journey of human beings by drilling down through the tree of life. It identifies physiological attributes that we share with other creatures, and our common ancestors - some of whom make a virtual appearance on the studio's floorspace. The secret to this augmented reality spectacle is the interactive touchpad provided to each audience member, which is also used to gather real-time results from the film's quizzes (see video above).
It was an experiment first conducted by Michael Faraday in 1831. But now, almost 200 years later and with the help of modern technology, it's yielding some surprising new results.
Faraday found that vertically vibrating a receptacle at the surface of a liquid causes interesting wave patterns. In particular, he discovered that standing waves - waves that remain stationary rather than travelling forwards - occur as a result of two waves travelling in opposite directions interfering with each other.
Video footage of a fluorescent jellyfish and psychedelic simulations might seem like they belong at a dance party. But new visualisations created by a team at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are actually revealing how jellyfish feed (see video above).
The team filmed the Cassiopea species because they typically lie still on the ocean floor and move their bodies and a network of arms to trap food. They injected fluorescent dyes in to the sand below the creatures, revealing the flow of fluid around them. Vortex rings appeared as the jellyfish retracted their arms, and then broke up into smaller structures as they passed over their tentacles. Currents mixed significantly above the arms, and pulsing helped drive flow down through them.
Stand next to a wet dog when it shakes itself dry and you'll soon discover how efficient it is. Now it seems this natural process could help us find better ways to wash and dry our own coats, too.
"It's surprising, but we still do not understand why washing machines work so well," says Andrew Dickerson, from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, because the equations that govern the fluid motion inside them are too complicated to solve.
Instead, Dickerson's team turned to nature to answer the question. They used slow-motion and X-ray footage of animals (see video above) to see in detail how they shake themselves dry, and attached motion-trackers to their fur to monitor the speed at which their skin moved.
What might your surroundings look like with a bionic eye? New simulations from Australia's National ICT Centre for Excellence (NICTA) are recreating what patients can expect to see with the next two generations of their device (see video above).
The microchip, being developed by Bionic Vision Australia in collaboration with the University of New South Wales and NICTA, will help restore sight to people with retinal dystrophy - a condition where photoreceptors, the light-sensitive cells in the retina, degenerate, leading to blindness. When implanted at the back of the eye, light bypasses the damaged photoreceptors and the device directly stimulates retinal ganglion cells. Images are then projected through the optic nerve, eventually reaching the visual cortex where they are interpreted.
When a dragonfly lifts off, a complex vortex structure forms over its four wings. Now a team from Wright State University in Ohio have simulated this behaviour for the first time, by analysing the insect's full body motion (see video above).
They filmed dragonflies with high speed cameras and a computer tracked markers on their wings. The results were used to produce a mathematical model that precisely simulates the vortices and how they form.
The team plans to use the simulations to create micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) that mimic dragonfly flight. The tiny aircraft should be useful for search and rescue and monitoring public places.
If you enjoyed this video, you may also like to see how ants can mimic liquids and the rest of our Fluid Nature series coming up later this week.
Can you tell the difference between real footage and CGI? To find out, check out the super-realistic advertisement in the video above. The ad has been causing a stir online this week, as viewers are baffled at the level of detail achieved by CGI alone.
Even more impressive is the fact that the two-man team behind the video created it using only off-the-shelf software, in a mere ten weeks.
But is this achievement down to skill alone, or is it just a question of computer power?
Rain may seem a harmless nuisance to us humans, but for ants, it's a big deal. They can get trapped by just a single drop and risk drowning. Paradoxically, it's by mimicking liquids that ants manage to conquer them.
In the video above, Micah Streiff and his team from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta captured writhing groups of ants behaving just like liquids. Working as a group they can turn themselves into a "raft" as they seek dry land or travel down a surface following the same physical rules as a viscous liquid. Thankfully, they haven't been caught mimicking your morning coffee just yet.
Say hello to a newly discovered sea worm that looks like it's sporting a bristly mohawk.
During a series of submersible dives to depths of 3000 metres in the Celebes Sea, researchers found 16 of these swimming worms. The new species, Teuthidodrilus samae, has a dizzying array of tentacles and sensory structures on its head (see picture below) and was described today in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.
Our latest best-of-the-web video roundup features DNA dance-moves, hypnotic crystals and some talented turkeys. Watch a hungry zebrafish catch a meal, and a mouse's immune system swarm enemy cells. See strange materials bend with electricity and shed water with ease. And for all the space enthusiasts out there, the number one video should certainly satisfy.
If you missed our previous best of the web round-ups, you might like to watch our spooky Hallowe'en special or our September edition featuring galactic collisions and slow motion lightning.
The first robotic arm inspired by an elephant's trunk has just gone on show in Germany. You can read the full blog post here.
It's the latest in a series of bionic designs by Festo of Denkendorf, Germany. The company previously created mechanical penguins that can swim, fly, and communicate with each other to avoid collisions.
It took months to build a camera capable of detecting dark energy at Fermilab in Illinois. But now you can watch the construction and testing in minutes, thanks to a new timelapse video.
The camera, equipped with 74 sensors to give it a total resolution of 570 megapixels, second only to the 1,400 megapixel resolution of the Pan-STARRS telescope, was built in a practice mount from January to October 2010. It will be installed later next year on the Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
Astronomers hope to further understand the nature of dark energy through accurate measurements of the redshift of distant galaxies. The faster an object moves away from the Earth, the further its light gets shifted into the red part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Measurements of the red shift of distant celestial bodies in the universe have shown that they are accelerating away from us and each other. Astronomers suggest a mysterious force called dark energy is responsible. The detector will conduct a five-year survey of 300 million galaxies in the southern skies, looking for evidence of this dark energy.
More than 120 scientists from 23 institutions in the United States, Brazil, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom are working on the project.
How do we know black holes exist? Would you like to know what it would be like to fall into one? Recent simulations and cutting-edge visuals are giving new insight into these strange objects and have helped us answer five big questions about them (see video above).
Using a chainsaw, a heat gun, a tonne of ice and some digital projection technology, a team from Nokia in Finland have created the world's first touchscreen made of ice (see video above). You can read the full story here.
The outlook is grim for amphibians with nearly one third of the world's species at risk of extinction. But there's a bit of good news: a critically endangered frog species has just been bred in captivity for the first time.
The La Loma tree frog is notoriously difficult to breed but the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project recently managed the tricky feat. "We were warned that we might not be able to keep these frogs alive, but through a little bit of guesswork, attention to detail and collaboration with other husbandry experts - we've managed to breed them," says Brian Gratwicke, the international coordinator for the project.
Frogs continue to be plagued by a fungal disease called chytridiomycosis which is contributing to their decline (see video above). The project is giving some hope as they also successfully bred another endangered species, the Limosa harlequin frog (see photo below). It hopes to save more than twenty species of frogs in Panama, one of the last strongholds of amphibian biodiversity in the world.
(The tiny Limosa Harlequin frog resting on a pane of glass. Credit:Angie Estrada, Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project)
Labelling the different components of a cell can be a painstaking task. Scientists typically apply a series of fluorescent dyes, one at a time, since each colour reveals different features. But now a single technique can add all of these markers simultaneously to a mammalian cell.
It was developed by Imre Berger from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Grenoble, France, and involves inserting a large number of foreign genes into the cell. Each gene encodes a protein that can carry a different fluorescent marker, allowing multiple labels to be applied instantly. The technique was first developed for use in insect cells but has now been adapted for mammalian cells.
The McGurk effect is an auditory illusion. It occurs when a video of a person speaking is given different audio, so the picture and the sounds don't match. Most people will hear a third sound - neither the original audio nor the audio they've just heard (see video above). The illusion demonstrates that we rely on both auditory and visual cues to process speech correctly.
Michael Beauchamp and colleagues from the University of Texas in Houston wanted to find out exactly where, and at what point during the perception process, these two senses combine in the brain. Previous studies have pointed to a brain area called the superior temporal sulcus (STS), although some researchers disagree. Now this debate can be laid to rest.
Part of the problem is that the STS region for auditory-visual integration is located at a different spot in each person, says Beauchamp. He therefore began by conducting MRI scans to determine its exact location in the brain of each subject.
Next, a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to find out whether the STS really is responsible for the McGurk effect. TMS fires a series of short electromagnetic pulses at a target area of the brain to deactivate it, so if the STS was the key, subjects undergoing TMS to that area wouldn't perceive the illusion.
As expected, temporary disruption of the STS caused a significant reduction in the perception of the McGurk effect. What's more, by applying the TMS in stages as the volunteers watched the videos, the team discovered that the McGurk effect only occurred during a narrow window of time in which the brain was combining auditory and visual stimuli.
The team reckons that the STS is made up of patches of brain cells that respond to specific syllables, whether they come in the form of a visual cue, an auditory cue or both. If what you see and what you hear doesn't match up, it causes these syllable-specific patches to scramble, and you perceive a totally different sound.
The research could help people with language problems. "Deaf children who receive cochlear implants often have trouble learning to integrate auditory and visual language information, as do children with dyslexia," Beauchamp says. "Now that we know what part of the brain is critical for this process, we can target interventions to this area, such as brain exercises that promote auditory-visual integration."
Perhaps you would do things differently if you were from another culture.
In the video above, from a study conducted by Daniel Haun and Christian Rapold from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands, culture influences the way a Namibian child learns a dance. When the boy is turned 180 degrees, he performs the dance the opposite way as he is used to an absolute frame of reference. The team also observed German children and found that they had memorized the routine with reference to themselves and so didn't flip the moves.
How could a winged reptile the size of a giraffe get off the ground to fly?
The question has been much-debated among palaeontologists. But a new a simulation of pterosaur movements may provide the answer.
Whereas birds jump into the air with the strength of their legs, pterosaurs launched themselves off the ground much as a pole-vaulter would (see video above) in a movement also used by modern vampire bats.
What happens when you cross a moth and a machine? Atsushi Takashima at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Ryo Minegishi from the Kanzaki laboratory at the University of Tokyo have created a robot that can track odours when plugged into a moth's nervous system. You can watch the cyborg in action (see video above) or read the full story here.
John Conway's mathematical universe known as the Game of Life has now been recreated on a grand scale. A giant interactive version (see video above) is on display at the San Jose Museum of Art. Read the full story here.
Drinking from a receptacle is no mean feat. Humans get around this
by tilting a glass or sucking up their drink through a straw. But for
our feline friends, it's a tougher challenge.
Now Pedro Reis and his team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have filmed cats as they lap up milk to
see precisely how they do it (see video above). The video has revealed
that it's a battle between inertia - how much a substance resists other
forces - and gravity.
"Almost everyone has observed a domestic cat lap milk or water. Yet,
casual observation hardly captures the elegance and complexity of this
act, as the tongue's action is too fast to be resolved by the naked
eye," writes Reis.
The high speed footage allowed the team to look at the tongue's
action in greater detail. They discovered that cats dip their tongue
in, bending it into an inverted "J" shape so the top touches the liquid
but never breaks the surface. A column of liquid is created when the
tongue is retracted, and the cat quickly snaps its mouth shut around the
liquid before it falls back down.
Jazz musicians could soon choose to perform with a non-human percussionist. A robot called Shimon, created by a team at Georgia Institute of Technology,has been designed to play the marimba and interact with humans as it performs. It was recently showcased at the USA Science and Engineering festival in Washington DC (see video above). It's been trained to use a built-in camera to recognise humans but the team plans to improve the system so that it identifies specific gestures. This should help it better improvise with fellow musicians.
Sifting through CCTV footage can be time-consuming but now software is helping out operators. A new system by a company called BriefCam can combine hours of video, superimposing events that happened at different times. You can read the full story here.
You may also like this other video about a helpful system that automatically spots suspect behaviour caught on CCTV.
The work of Mexican-born artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer could be the most personal art you've ever seen. That's because it uses parts of your body - from your pulse to your fingerprint - to create exhibits when you visit the gallery.
In Pulse Room (see video, above) 300 incandescent light-bulbs illuminate a room. A participant-viewer touches a sensor that detects their heartbeat, which directly affects the lighting. When the participant lets go of the sensor, all the lights are extinguished for a short time. The heartbeat joins with 300 of the most recent heartbeats to set the patterns of light.
Read a full review of Recorders, Lozano-Hemmer's new exhibition, here.
You can see a gallery of the artist's back catalogue here.
The 6-metre-tall work-of-art, called Geometric Death Frequency -141,
is the brainchild of artist Federico Diaz. He used algorithms and fluid dynamics simulations to turn his 2D design into a 3D model. Then he gave two robots the task of recreating the model from 420,000 bespoke plastic balls (see video below). They worked non-stop for a period of 4 months to complete the masterpiece from a workshop in Prague. "The whole process of production as well as the installation went smoothly," says Diaz. " The only challenge was the unexpected temperature of -1°C during the last night when we installed the sculpture at the museum. But that was a pleasant challenge given the work has the shape of a frozen wave."
What would Mexico look like if it were overrun with slime mould? To find out, take a look at the video above. But Mexicans needn't worry - it's all part of an experiment, contained in a Petri dish.
Slime mould - a primitive, amoeba-like organism more commonly found on the woodland floor - is known to forage towards food sources by growing a network of connected tubes that carry nutrients. It appears to calculate the most efficient route when it does so, finding the shortest paths. All pretty amazing, considering the single-celled organism doesn't have a brain or a central nervous system.
"Slime mould not only calculates shortest paths but also optimises two-way transport of nutrients and metabolites," says Andy Adamatzky from the University of the West of England, in Bristol, UK.
Slime mould's efficiency got Adamatzky and his colleagues wondering whether the brainless goo might teach humans a thing or two about planning transport networks. To find out, the team put Mexico in a Petri dish by mapping the locations of the country's cities with oat flakes, one of slime mould's favourite snacks. They then placed a piece of slime mould - Physarum polycephalum - on Mexico City, sat back and watched.
The video above shows how the slime mould spread out from Mexico City, forging networks between the oat-flake cities that were similar in shape to Mexico's real highway networks.
Holography has just gained a fourth dimension, bringing the prospect of Star Wars-style holographic telepresence into the real world.
Ever since Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks made the first laser holograms in 1963, holography has been the future of three-dimensional imaging. Once created, a hologram can be illuminated to create a pattern of light waves that replicates the light reflected by the original object, generating a 3D image without the need for special glasses.
As such, holography seems an ideal medium for three-dimensional telepresence, like the famous "hologram" of Princess Leia in the first Star Wars movie. During its 2008 presidential election night coverage, CNN's coverage used what appeared to be holographic technology, with anchor Wolf Blitzer talking face-to-face with a virtual 3D correspondent, Jessica Yellin - but the impressive visuals were added to the camera feed rather than being projected live onto the studio floor.
As befitted an event dedicated to Gardner, there were plenty of games, puzzles, magic tricks and illusions to astound attendees - including an intricate spiral-shaped tower made from a single huge piece of paper under the direction of origami master Chris Palmer. Watch the video to see how it was done.
Watch the video to see new simulations of the early universe showing how galaxies might have been formed.
"Cold, dark matter" has a certain ring to it, but new simulations of our corner of the cosmos suggest that dark matter - the stuff that is thought to underlie the universe - might be warm, with relatively fast-moving and lightweight particles.
In cosmology's standard model, dark matter is cold, made up of relatively heavy low-energy particles, and will happily settle into structures as small as planets. Hot dark matter has already been ruled out because its particles would move too fast for galaxies to form. But warm dark matter has smaller, faster particles that still allow for our familiar starry sky.
Most computer models produce a generic universe that doesn't resemble ours in detail, but Gustavo Yepes at the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain, and his collaborators on the Constrained Local Universe Simulations (CLUES) project have tuned theirs to resemble the galaxies and clusters nearest Earth.
Ever seen a pigeon do a flip in a storm? Flight researcher David Lentink, from University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, has. Now he hopes to see it all again in slow motion, with the help of an academic prize, twenty-one high speed cameras and 700 members of the Dutch public.
"I am interested in whatever flies," says Lentink, who studies the aerodynamics of flight in animals and plant seeds. He has filmed everything from hoverflies to lovebirds in wind tunnels and now he plans to take the flight laboratory outside and let the public hold the camera.
The naked mole rat lives for ages, shrugs off chemical stings and never gets cancer. No wonder scientists are keen to learn the secrets of this small, bald Methuselah. Watch our video of these weird-looking rodents that could provide clues to long life.