How war changes people

Something a bit more serious this week. When photographer Claire Felicie's son planned to join the marine's she spent a lot of time thinking about what impact that might have on him. As a result of that she came up with a plan to photograph the faces of 20 Dutch Marines before, during, and after their tour of duty in Afghanistan. Only 12 months passed between the first and the last photo, but the lives of these men saw a lot of action. Ms Felicie wanted to see if the marks war left on these men could be seen on their faces.

It's clear there are environmental factors (sun, wind...), but are there other changes as well?

More photos & commentary here.

As a writer this raised some interesting thoughts about character building, and on how events in the characters lives (both on & off the page) might be written on their faces.

Make your life easier

I came across this list and I just had to share, after all who doesn't want to make their lives easier? The compiler of this list calls them life-hacks, which I also rather liked :)

There are 99 on the list but here are a few of them:

And I think I really better stop there :)
I just wish there was a quick & easy way to get a book to write itself - sadly no smiley face tennis balls are going to do the job for me.

Cool inventions

2 very cool inventions this week and the shades of sci-fi that surround them: an inner ear implant that uses biology to recharge, & self-fixing concrete.

Technology that uses people as power - shades of The Matrix anyone?   :)
No we haven't quite got that far yet, but we have got to a place that should make huge breakthroughs in medical science.
"A team of surgeons, neuroscientists, and electrical engineers has developed a cochlea chip that extracts electrical signals from the inner ear to power itself.
The chip is the latest in a series of inventions aimed at creating entirely self-sufficient, self-powering implants that will remove the need for external power and enable permanent surgical implantation in some cases. This year alone, Stanford University announced the creation of its radio wave-powered heart implant and infrared light-powered retinal implants."
 Ever seen someone who looks a bit embarrassed about their hearing aid - that could soon be a thing of the past. Get these things small enough and soon no one will know you're wearing one.
On a different sci-fi tack, where does this leave us for things like super-soldiers with super hearing?

From ears to concrete. There is now experimental concrete that self-heals it's own cracks.
"The concrete contains limestone-producing bacteria, which are activated by corrosive rainwater working its way into the structure... Micro-cracks are an expected part of the hardening process and do not directly cause strength loss. Fractures with a width of about 0.2mm are allowed under norms used by the concrete industry. But over time, water - along with aggressive chemicals in it - gets into these cracks and corrodes the concrete...
"So the spores remain dormant until rainwater works its way into the cracks and activates them. The harmless bacteria - belonging to the Bacillus genus - then feed on the nutrients to produce limestone.
The bacterial food incorporated into the healing agent is calcium lactate - a component of milk. The microbes used in the granules are able to tolerate the highly alkaline environment of the concrete.
"In the lab we have been able to show healing of cracks with a width of 0.5mm - two to three times higher than the norms state," Dr Jonkers explained."

What about the sci-fi overtones you ask? Well, as I read this article images from sci-fi movies with cities in decay came to mind. If the concrete self-healed those cities would look quite different.

How eerie if the city is far more perfectly preserved – although I imagine the plants would still get involved.

fly away - printed plane

Ever spent hours & hours building a model plane? Painstakingly cuting & glueing? ever thoguht of just printing one out and going for it? Two student engineers have done just that.
And, okay, I'd better confess that I'm not the model plane kinda gal, but printing one out - that sounds pretty cool... and not quite a simple as I've made out.

Two University of Virginia engineering students got to build an unmanned aerial vehicle, using 3-D printing technology. "In other words, a plastic plane, to be designed, fabricated, built and test-flown between May and August. A real-world engineering challenge, and part of a Department of the Army project to study the feasibility of using such planes."

So not just printing out, but designing as well. Of course once they've designed it, (and it's working), there's nothing to stop anyone else, say the military, from prinitng them out and just going for it.

The unmanned aerial vehicle, "dressed" in U.Va.'s colors. The plane was built entirely from parts from a 3-D printer.

This whole 3D printing idea is rather sci-fi when you think back ot hte good old dot matrix. All those years ago, while pulling those horrible little hole strips off the side of sheets of papaer, I never would have guessed that one day printes would be playing in 3D.

"Three-dimensional printing is, as the name implies, the production or “printing” of actual objects, such as parts for a small airplane, by using a machine that traces out layers of melted plastic in specific shapes until it builds up a piece exactly according to the size and dimensions specified in a computer-aided drawing produced by an engineer."


All so simple, and if you break it - just print a new one :)

Long weekends

Bad Louise, Bad. running late on blog post again.
Excuse? Nope don't have one, so I'll just launch right in :)

We’ve just had a long weekend. I love weekends, even though they remind me how much I like holidays then make me go back to work.


Things I love about long weekends:
A chance to curl up with a good book, catch up with friends & family, 2 late nights without work the next day ramifications.
The simple pleasures really :)
You know what I hate about long weekends:
Getting a cold on the Friday, feeling horrible all weekend, and then getting better just in time to go back to work.

Guess how I spent my long weekend?
You got it. Stuck inside with a box of tissues and a sad face.

Weekend just gone was much more the thing – but it was far too short!

Me Before the long weekend...

Me After the long weekend...

The Science of Kissing

Hi All

Sorry no post last week, time escaped on me, and before I knew it I had lost a week.

So this week – kissing.

Who knew there was a whole field of scientific research devoted to this core enjoyable element of life - and core element of romance novels ;)

Well, the scientists who study it obviously knew, but for the rest of us it’s the study of philematology.

Want to know more – of course you do. Who doesn’t want more on kissing.

It turns out that kissing isn’t as simple as a fun way to show affection (or luurve), it’s all a bit more complex than that.

Many philemantologists – those who study kissing – agree that it developed as a way for mothers to pass pre-chewed food to their infants (think of birds who still do this, albeit without lips). However, that doesn’t explain a romantic meeting of lips between adults. As with so many things it turn out men & women may have different motivations. Snippets of an article below go some way to explaining.

“...According to Gordon Gallup Jr., a psychologist at the State University of New York at Albany, "females are much more prone to use kissing as a mate assessment device... and even within an ongoing relationship, they use kissing as a way to update and monitor its status”... Men, by contrast, use kissing as a means to an end—that is, sex. They were far more willing to have sex without kissing, his study found, and while a bad first kiss can be a deal-breaker for both genders, men are more willing to go ahead and have sex with someone whose kiss is unpleasant.

And how is all this assessment and evaluation being conducted? "At the moment of a kiss, there is a very complicated exchange of all kinds of different information," says Gallup. Some of it is in chemical form. Contained in male saliva, for example, are small amounts of testosterone, which is known to boost libido in both genders. It's possible, Gallup says, that repeated and prolonged exposure—that is, many make-out sessions over days and weeks and months—may increase the female's sex drive. (That might explain why men prefer sloppier kisses than women, too—they're trying to get her in the mood.)...”

Then of course there’s pheromones and all sorts of other chemical signals. Kissing means getting close enough to smell and taste, and smell also covers chemicals which may be present in saliva that are volatilized and sensed by the nasal cavity. All together this means is the building blocks for helping us determine whether someone is a good genetic match.

Finally the article added “...Kissing may also reinforce pair bonding, helping to maintain relationships. Research by Wendy Hill, a neuroscientist as well as provost and dean of the faculty at Lafayette College, has shown that kissing reduces levels of the stress hormone cortisol...”

All that & fun too  :x

  

Full article here :x

 

Bendy-camouflage robot

Very cool bit of tech, bendy-camouflage robot. It's been a little since a tech post - and this I couldn't resist.

Now you see it ..... Disappearing ... gone.

Well, virtually, the video jumped before I got the final picture. It also glows in the dark if the researchers want it to. It was inspired by the camouflage skills of sea creatures such as octopuses, cuttlefish and squid.

Professor George Whitesides, an author of the paper, said: "Conventional robotics is a pretty highly developed area, and if you look at various robots you find that most are basically built on the body plan of a mammal. Our question is: Why do you have to do that? Why not think about organisms that are soft, that might have quite different structures and ways of moving and strategies for camouflage. And the obvious place to look is underwater."

Very cool, Professor, very cool.I image the uses for something like this, with it's squidgy body and can squeeze places and change color, are innumerable, even my fertile writer's brain can't keep up :)