Mice learn to see in colourBy Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 1:28pm GMT 23/03/2007
Mice have had a human gene introduced into their eyes to give them colour vision similar to that enjoyed by people.
The experiment provides new hope to blind people that the brain can adapt more quickly than thought to new sensory information, for instance from an artificial retina of the kind currently under development in various labs.
And it sheds new light on the evolution of colour vision, a topic of intensive study for more than three decades, showing that the ability to detect a broader spectrum of light had knock on effects on brain development.
The light-sensing retina in the eyes of primates such as humans and monkeys is unique among mammals in that it has three pigments that absorb short (blue), medium (green) and long (red) wavelengths of light.
Mice, like other mammals, only have two pigments; one for short and one for medium wavelengths.
As a result, mice have dichromatic vision (which, in human terms, registers yellows, blues and greys), similar to what some people with red-green colour blindness see.
Although mice, like most mammals, typically view the world with a limited colour palette scientists have now transformed their vision by introducing a single human gene into a mouse chromosome.
The human gene codes for a light sensor that mice do not normally possess, and its insertion allowed the mice to distinguish colours as never before.
For the new study in the journal Sciencea team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, together with researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara, introduced a human long wavelength receptor on the X chromosome, which made the mice produce a third pigment that registered longer wavelengths of light.
The human genes were biologically functional in the mice, but the real question was whether the mice could use the new visual information.
“It’s been unclear,” Prof Gerald Jacobs explained, “whether the simple addition of a photopigment is sufficient to yield a new dimension of colour vision, or whether you might need, in addition, some changes in the nervous system.”
The new abilities of the genetically engineered mice indicate that the brain does indeed possess a flexibility that permits a nearly instantaneous upgrade in the complexity of colour vision, say the study’s senior authors, Prof Jacobs and Jeremy Nathans.
When the team tested the mice on tasks involving distinguishing differently coloured panels and lights, the results indicated that the mice had new colour vision, revealing how genetic mutations may have ultimately allowed our ancestors to see five colours in a rainbow.
Once genetic changes produced additional photopigments in primates, which is thought to have occurred more than 40 million years ago, the animals’ brains were able to “rewire” themselves in order to process the new signals and allow full-colour vision.
“If you gave mice a new sensory input at the front end, could their brains learn to make use of the extra data at the back end?” asks Prof Nathans. “The answer is, remarkably, yes.
They did not require additional generations to evolve new sight. What we are looking at in these mice is the same evolutionary event that happened in one of the distant ancestors of all primates and that led ultimately to the trichromatic colour vision that we now enjoy.”
There are several theories to explain why colour vision helped our ancestors.
John Mollon at the University of Cambridge has suggested that it allowed primates to discriminate between unripe fruit, which is typically green, and ripe red- and orange-coloured fruits.
But a team from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, has challenged this idea with evidence that colour vision is crucial for seeing changes in the skin of others - whether they are red with rage, flushed with embarrassment or white with fear.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Jonathan Taylor Thomas
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Jonathan Taylor Thomas | |
| Birth name | Jonathan Taylor Weiss |
| Born | September 8, 1981 Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,  USA |
| Official site | None |
| Notable roles | Randy Taylor in Home Improvement (TV) Voice of Young Simba in The Lion King |
Jonathan Taylor Thomas (born Jonathan Taylor Weiss on September 8, 1981 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) is an American child actor and former teen idol, best known for his role as middle child Randy Taylor on the sitcom Home Improvement.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Thomas was born to Claudine and Stephen Weiss, who divorced in 1989; he has German, Jewish and Portuguese ancestry.[1] He has a brother, Joel Thomas Weiss, whose middle name he adopted as his pseudonym, in order to avoid confusion with an existing actor named Jonathan Weiss.
In 1986, Thomas moved with his family to Roseville, California, and was later cast in a Burger King commercial at the age of eight.
[edit] Career
In 1990, Thomas, garnered the role of Greg Brady's son, Kevin, on the short-lived TV show, "The Bradys" -- a spin-off of the popular 70s TV show, "The Brady Bunch". In 1991, at the age of 10, he won the role of Randy Taylor on the popular television show Home Improvement. He went on to voice Young Simba in Disney's The Lion King and Pinocchio in The Adventures of Pinocchio. He remained with Home Improvement well into his teenage years, but left the show in 1998 in order to concentrate more on his academics. He served as guest timekeeper at WrestleMania XI in 1995.
As Thomas got older, he earned a reputation as a teen heartthrob and was a leading cover boy on teen magazines. He starred in the Christmas comedy I'll Be Home for Christmas. He also appeared in the movies Man of the House, Tom and Huck, Wild America, Common Ground, Walking Across Egypt (film) and Speedway Junky. He had a guest role on the ABC sitcom 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter in early 2004, and appeared in the WB's Smallville in 2002 and 2004. In 2005, he had a guest role in UPN's high school detective drama Veronica Mars, and was also featured on The E! True Hollywood Story's show on Home Improvement.
In 2006, he provided voice audio as the young Simba (via stock audio from The Lion King) in the PlayStation 2 video game Kingdom Hearts II, developed by Square Enix.
[edit] Personal life
Thomas attended Harvard University and spent spring semester of his third year at the University of St. Andrews.
[edit] References
- ^ [1] questions and answers w/ Jonathan Taylor Thomas; "I am, like, Heinz 57! I mean, I'm a mix of everything! But I'm part Portuguese. That's where I get the olive skin. I tan really easily."
[edit] External links
Categories: 1981 births | Living people | American child actors | American film actors | American television actors | American voice actors | Disney people | Jewish American actors | Kingdom Hearts cast members | People from the Lehigh Valley | German-Americans | Portuguese-Americans | American vegans
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One Foot in the Grave (album)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| One Foot in the Grave | ||
 | ||
| Studio album by Beck | ||
| Released | 27 June 1994 | |
| Recorded | October 1993 and January 1994 Dub Narcotic Studio, Olympia, Washington | |
| Genre | Alternative Rock, Indie Rock | |
| Length | 37:11 | |
| Label | K Records | |
| Producer(s) | Calvin Johnson | |
| Professional reviews | ||
|---|---|---|
| Beck chronology | ||
| Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994) | One Foot in the Grave (1994) | Odelay (1996) |
One Foot in the Grave is an indie rock album by Beck, released in June of 1994 on K Records, an independent label. Like predecessor Stereopathetic Soul Manure, the album never charted. However, One Foot in the Grave strengthened Beck's critical reputation, allowing him to break into the mainstream with Odelay in 1996. His third official album, One Foot in the Grave has a strong folk influence, more pronounced than in Beck's usual eclectic style. One Foot in the Grave was recorded prior to the release of his debut album Mellow Gold, but was not released until after that album met with critical and commercial success.
The album features the production talents and occasional backing vocals of Calvin Johnson, founder of K Records. It was recorded at Dub Narcotic Studio, which was then housed in Calvin's basement.
[edit] Track listing
All songs by Beck.
- "He's a Mighty Good Leader" – 2:41
- "Sleeping Bag" – 2:15
- "I Get Lonesome" – 2:50
- "Burnt Orange Peel" – 1:39
- "Cyanide Breath Mint" – 1:37
- "See Water" – 2:22
- "Ziplock Bag" – 1:44
- "Hollow Log" – 1:53
- "Forcefield" – 3:31
- "Fourteen Rivers Fourteen Floods" – 2:54
- "Asshole" – 2:32
- "I've Seen the Land Beyond" – 1:40
- "Outcome" – 2:10
- "Girl Dreams" – 2:02
- "Painted Eyelids" – 3:06
- "Atmospheric Conditions" – 2:09
- "It's All in Your Mind" – 2:56 (Japanese version only)
- "Feather in Your Cap" – 1:12 (Japanese version only)
- "Whiskey Can Can" – 2:15 (Japanese version only)
[edit] Credits
- Beck - Bass, Guitar, Drums, Vocals
- Calvin Johnson - Vocals
- Chris Ballew - Bass, Guitar
- James Bertram - Bass
- Sam Jayne - Vocals
- Scott Plouf - Drums
- Mario Prietto - Bongos
| Beck |
| Discography |
|---|
| Major label albums: Mellow Gold | Odelay | Mutations | Midnite Vultures | Sea Change | Guero | The Information |
| Remix albums: Guerolito |
| Independent releases: Stereopathetic Soulmanure | One Foot in the Grave |
| Unofficial releases: Golden Feelings | A Western Harvest Field by Moonlight Singles: Loser | Pay No Mind (Snoozer) | Beercan | It's All In Your Mind | Where It's At | Devils Haircut The New Pollution | Sissyneck | Jack-Ass | Deadweight | Tropicalia | Cold Brains Nobody's Fault But My Own | Sexx Laws | Mixed Bizness | Nicotine & Gravy | Lost Cause E-Pro | Girl | Hell Yes | Nausea |
| Related articles |
| Nigel Godrich | Dust Brothers | Bendin' in the Wind |
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
march (03) / 20 / 2007 - Tuesday
This is the beginning of information overload; barely scrapping the surface . . .
Artist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practising the arts and/or demonstrating an art. Debate, both historical and present day, suggests that defining the concept of an artist will continue to be difficult.
Look up artist in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Dictionary definitions
Wiktionary defines the noun 'artist' (Singular: artist; Plural: artists) as follows:
- 1. A person who creates art.
- 2. A person who creates art as an occupation.
- 3. A person who is skilled at some activity
The Oxford English dictionary, cites broad meanings of the term "artist,"
-
- A learned person or Master of Arts
- One who pursues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy, chemistry
- A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice - the opposite of a theorist
- A follower of a manual art, such as a mechanic
- One who makes their craft a fine art
- One who cultivates one of the fine arts - traditionally the arts presided over by the muses
(referenced from: C. T. Onions (1991). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Clarendon Press Oxford. ISBN 0-19-861126-9. )
[edit] History of the term
In Greek the word "techně" is often mistranslated into "art." In actuality, "techně" implies mastery of a craft (any craft.) The Latin-derived form of the word is "tecnicus", from which the English words technique, technology, technical are derived.
In Greek culture the seven Muses patronaged eacha different field of human creation:
The word art is derived from the Latin "ars", which, although literally defined means, "skill method" or "technique", holds a connotation of beauty.
During the Middle Ages the word artist already existed in some countries such as Italy, but the meaning was something resembling craftsman, while the word artesan was still unknown. An artist was someone able to do a work better than others, so the skilled excellency was underlined, rather than the activity field. Looking to registries or acts of those times it is easy to find out how some goods (such as textiles) were much more precious and expensive than paintings or sculptures.
The first division into major and minor arts dates back to Leon Battista Alberti's works (De re aedificatoria, De statua, De pictura), focusing the importance of intellectual skills of the artist rather than the manual skills (even if in other forms of art there was a project behind).
Michelangelo Buonarroti is generally indicated as the first artist who separated his creative work from the committance requirements.
With the Academies in Europe (second half of XVI century) the gap between fine and applied arts was definitely set.
Many contemporary definitions of "artist" and "art" are highly contingent on culture, resisting aesthetic prescription, in much the same way that the features constituting beauty and the beautiful, cannot be standardized easily without corruption into kitsch.
The word "artist" is used as a pejorative in certain circles (connotating, for example, pretentiousness, selfishness, temperamentalness, egotism, and having an inflated sense of one's own self-worth).
(referenced from: P.Galloni, Il sacro artefice. Mitologie degli artigiani medievali, Laterza, Bari, 1998)
[edit] The present day concept of an 'artist'
Artist is a descriptive term applied to a person who engages in an activity deemed to be an art. An artist also may be defined unofficially, as, "a person who expresses themselves through a medium". The word also is used in a qualitative sense of, a person creative in, innovative in, or adept at, an artistic practice.
Most often, the term describes those who create within a context of 'high culture', activities such as drawing, painting, sculpture, acting, dancing, writing, filmmaking, photography, and music—people who use imagination, talent, or skill to create works that may be judged to have an aesthetic value. Art historians and critics will define as artists, those who produce art within a recognized or recognizable discipline.
The term also is used to denote highly skilled people in non-"arts" activities, as well—crafts, law, medicine, alchemy, mechanics, mathematics, defense (martial arts), and architecture, for example. The designation is applied to high skill in illegal activities, such as "scam artist" or "con artist".
There is no consensus about what constitutes "art" or who is, or who is not, an "artist". Often, discussions on the subject focus on the differences among "artist" and "technician", "entertainer" and "artisan," "fine art" and "applied art," or what constitutes art and what does not. The French word artiste (which in French, simply means "artist") has been imported into the English language where it means a performer (frequently in Music Hall or Vaudeville). The English word 'artist' has thus, a narrower range of meanings than the word 'artiste' in French.
[edit] Examples of art and artists
- Jiaur Rahman
- Abstract: Laneova'
- Actress: Greta Garbo
- Animation: Walt Disney
- Architect: Antoni Gaudí
- Ballet: Margot Fonteyn
- Calligraphy: Hokusai
- Ceramicist: Lucie Rie
- Choreographer: Martha Graham
- Collage: Jonathan Talbot
- Comics: Will Eisner
- Composer: Giuseppe Verdi
- Conceptual artist: Vanessa Beecroft
- Dancer: Isadora Duncan
- Designer: Arne Jacobsen
- Digitalartist: Gio' Myart
- Entertainer: PT Barnum
- Fashion designer: Alexander McQueen
- Fashion model: Helena Christensen
- Floral designer: Junichi Kakizaki
- Game Designer: Peter Molyneux
- Graphic designer: Saul Bass
- Horticulture: André le Nôtre
- Illusionist: Houdini
- Illustrator: Quentin Blake
- Industrial designer: Pininfarina
- Jewelry: Fabergé
- Movie director: Sergei Eisenstein
- Muralist: Diego Rivera
- Musician: John Lennon
- Novelist: Charles Dickens
- Musical instrument maker: Stradivari
- Orator: Cicero
- Outsider Art: Nek Chand
- Painter: Rembrandt van Rijn
- Photographer: Bill Brandt
- Photomontage: John Heartfield
- Pianist: Glenn Gould
- Playwright: Alan Bennett
- Plastic Paint Medium: Josignacio
- Poet: Pablo Neruda
- Potter: Bernard Leach
- Printmaker: Albrecht Dürer
- Sculptor: Michelangelo Buonarotti
- Short Story Writer: Dorothy Parker
- Singer: Judy Garland
- Street Art: Banksy
- Typographer: Eric Gill
[edit] See Related Topics
- Art
- Arts-related lists
- Art history
- Arts by region
- Fine art
- Humanities
- Social sciences
- [category: Arts]
- [Category: Arts-related Lists]]
- [Category: Lists of Artists]
- [Category: Arts Occupations]
- List of sculptors
- List of composers
- List of artists by nationality
- Lists of artists by medium
[edit] References
P.Galloni, Il sacro artefice. Mitologie degli artigiani medievali, Laterza, Bari, 1998 C. T. Onions (1991). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Clarendon Press Oxford. ISBN 0-19-861126-9
[edit] External links
| Find more information on Arts by searching Wikipedia's sister projects | |
|---|---|
| Dictionary definitions from Wiktionary |
 | Textbooks from Wikibooks |
 | Quotations from Wikiquote |
 | Source texts from Wikisource |
 | Images and media from Commons |
 | News stories from Wikinews |
 | Learning resources from Wikiversity |
Xerox PARC
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
PARC (Palo Alto Research Center, Inc.), formerly Xerox PARC, is a research and development company in Palo Alto, California that began as a division of Xerox Corporation. It was founded in 1970, and incorporated as a separate company (wholly owned by Xerox) in 2002. It is best known for inventing laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer graphical user interface (GUI) paradigm, object-oriented programming, and ubiquitous computing. Today PARC collaborates with sponsors and clients to discover novel business concepts and transfer scientific findings into production. Current research areas include biomedical technologies, "clean technology," user interface design, sensemaking, ubiquitous computing, large area electronics, and embedded and intelligent systems.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] History
PARC's founding director, George Pake, was a physicist, working in the area of nuclear magnetic resonance. Dr. Pake had been serving as provost of Washington University in 1969 when he was approached by Jack Goldman, Chief Scientist at Xerox. The result of their partnership was that Goldman was chiefly responsible for Xerox founding, and generously funding, a second research center, and George Pake was chiefly responsible for choosing PARC's location in Palo Alto — 3,000 miles away from Xerox headquarters.
In retrospect, this turned out to be a good idea, for around 1974, PARC was able hire many employess of the nearby Augmentation Research Center (founded by Douglas Engelbart) as Engelbart's funding from DARPA, NASA, and the U.S. Air Force was drying up.
Much of its success in the computer field was due to the inspired leadership of PARC's Computer Science Laboratory by Bob Taylor, as associate manager (1970–77), and then manager (1977–83),
On January 4, 2002, PARC was incorporated as a subsidiary company of Xerox, called Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated, i.e., PARC. Following the spin-off, PARC remains a wholly owned subsidiary of the Xerox Corporation. As of 2004, Xerox remained the company's largest customer, but PARC had also announced a multi-year relationship with Fujitsu and an entrance into biomedical sciences in partnership with the Scripps Research Institute of La Jolla, CA.
[edit] Accomplishments
PARC has been the incubator of many elements of modern computing. Most were included in the Alto, which introduced and unified most aspects of now-standard personal computer usage model: the mouse[1], computer generated color graphics, a graphical user interface featuring windows and icons, the WYSIWYG text editor, InterPress (a resolution-independent graphical page description language and the precursor to PostScript), Ethernet, and fully formed object-oriented programming in the Smalltalk programming language and integrated development environment. The laser printer was developed at the same time, as an integral part of the overall environment.
Among PARC's distinguished researchers were two Turing Award winners: Butler W. Lampson (1992) and Alan Kay (2003). The ACM Software System Award recognized the Alto system in 1984, Smalltalk in 1987, InterLisp in 1992, and Remote Procedure Call in 1994. Lampson, Kay, Bob Taylor, and Charles P. Thacker received the National Academy of Engineering's prestigious Charles Stark Draper Prize in 2004 for their work on the Alto system.
Xerox has been heavily criticized (particularly by business historians) for failing to properly commercialize and profitably exploit PARC's innovations. A favorite example is the GUI, initially developed at PARC for the Alto and then commercialized as the Xerox Star by the Xerox Systems Development Department. Although very significant in terms of its influence on future system design, it is deemed a failure because it only sold approximately 25,000 units. A small group from PARC led by David Liddle and Charles Irby formed Metaphor Computer Systems. They extended the Star desktop concept into an animated graphic and communicating office automation model and sold the company to IBM.
The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC's work; Xerox was given Apple stock in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product. Much later, in the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit in which Apple accused Microsoft of violating its copyright by appropriating the use of the "look and feel" of the Macintosh GUI, Xerox also sued Apple on the same grounds[citation needed]. The lawsuit was dismissed because Xerox had waited too long to file suit, and the statute of limitations had expired. However, some dispute the degree to which the Apple interface was derived from Xerox designs[1]. Indeed, prior to Apple's visits to PARC, its Macintosh project more closely resembled the Valdocs operating system of the Epson QX-10.
There is no denying the long-term impact of PARC's systems. It took two decades for much of their technology to be equalled or surpassed. The interfaces and technology that PARC pioneered became standards for much of the computing industry, once their merits were widely known.
It is legend that Xerox management consistently failed to see the potential of many of the PARC inventions. While there is some truth to this, it is also an over-simplification. They certainly understood the value of laser printing, and of advances coming from the non-computer-focused part of PARC. Most critics don't realize that computing research was a relatively small part of PARC; there were many researchers working in areas such as materials science at PARC, including pioneers in LCD and optical disc technologies.
The work at PARC in the years since the early 1980s is often overlooked, but major work since then includes ubiquitous computing aka pervasive computing, aspect-oriented programming, and IPv6 to name but a few.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Xerox PARC was the first research group to widely adopt the mouse invented by Douglas Engelbart's Augmentation Research Center at the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) in Menlo Park, California.
[edit] Further reading
- Michael A. Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (HarperCollins, New York, 1999) ISBN 0-88730-989-5
- Douglas K. Smith, Robert C. Alexander, Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer (William Morrow, New York, 1988) ISBN 1-58348-266-0
- M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (Viking Penguin, New York, 2001) ISBN 0-670-89976-3
- Howard Rheingold, Tools For Thought (MIT Press, 2000) ISBN 0-262-68115-3
[edit] External links
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