Kirlian photography
Kirlian photography is a collection of photographic techniques used to capture the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharges. It is named after Semyon Kirlian, who, in 1939 accidentally discovered that if an object on a photographic plate is connected to a high-voltage source, an image is produced on the photographic plate.
Kirlian photography is a technique for creating contact print photographs using high voltage. The process entails placing sheet photographic film on top of a metal discharge plate. The object to be photographed is then placed directly on top of the film. High voltage is momentarily applied to the metal plate, thus creating an exposure. The corona discharge between the object and the high voltage plate is captured by the film. The developed film results in a Kirlian photograph of the object.
Color photographic film is calibrated to faithfully produce colors when exposed to normal light. Corona discharges can interact with minute variations in the different layers of dye used in the film, resulting in a wide variety of colors depending on the local intensity of the discharge. Film and digital imaging techniques also record light produced by photons emitted during corona discharge (see Mechanism of corona discharge).
Photographs of inanimate objects such as a coins, keys and leaves can be made more effectively by grounding the object to the earth, a cold water pipe or to the opposite (polarity) side of the high voltage source. Grounding the object creates a stronger corona discharge.
Kirlian photography does not require the use of a camera or a lens because it is a contact print process. It is possible to use a transparent electrode in place of the high voltage discharge plate, allowing one to capture the resulting corona discharge with a standard camera or a video camera.
The Only Known Photograph of Einstein Deriving his Famous E=mc2 Equation
At a public lecture in Pittsburgh in 1934, four hundred lucky students were privy to a lecture by Albert Einstein, in which the great man mathematically derived his famous mass-energy equivalence equation: E=mc2. What you see above is a photo from that lecture, and what is thought to be the only surviving photo that shows Einstein working on that derivation.
The photo was pulled from a halftone newspaper clipping by David Topper and Dwight Vincent of the University of Winnipeg, who discovered it in 2007. Sadly, everything is a bit fuzzy so you can’t really make out the famed equation itself. And even though the original article had a crisp picture of Einstein posing next to one of his blackboards, he’s next to the wrong one.
Here’s a closer look at the man and the math. If you look closely, you’ll see the mass-energy equivalence in the lower left hand corner of the blackboard on the right:
Fortunately, Topper and Vincent managed to take the blurry photo and reproduce both blackboards in their original paper. Here’s the math behind the magic, the derivation of mass-energy equivalence as presented by Albert Einstein.
In case you’re wondering why the famous equation says Δ
Picture from Hubbles Deep Field Project
The hubble space telescope glared at 1 spot in the sky continously for 50 days to produce this Amazing, and detailed, Picture!
(Source: marshafabianamancini)
Early ventriloquists and their dummies.
Why, no, nothing creepy about ventriloquists at ALL.
I will steadfastly defend clowns to the day I die.
Ventriloquist dummies, however, are fricking creepy as hell.
SO THAT’S HOW THEY DO IT
I stared at this for 5 min omg
OMFG
(Source: yodiscrepo)
These cats have no fucking idea what is happening.
Oh my god.
Those poor cats and omg I can’t breathe at all.
this is 10% evil and 90% hilarious
(Source: japanlove)
If I were a cat, I’d be Salem Saberhagen
and beyond
To Infinity
Human Testing, the Eugenics Movement, and IRBs
By: Karen Norrgard, Ph.D. (Write Science Right) © 2008 Nature EducationCitation: Norrgard, K. (2008) Human testing, the eugenics movement, and IRBs. Nature Education 1(1)The eugenics movement of the early 1900s ultimately went horribly wrong despite its noble aims. What can we learn from this movement’s outcomes in order to avoid the repetition of these mistakes?British scientist Francis Galton (Figure 1) is perhaps best known for his studies that compared the behavioral differences between dizygotic and monozygotic twins, or perhaps for his statistical innovations including the concepts of chi square, regression, andcorrelation. What many people don’t realize, however, is that Galton was also the creator of the field of eugenics. In an 1869 work, Galton assembled biographical information from obituaries and other sources and constructed pedigrees of leading English families, concluding that superior intelligence and abilities were inherited with an efficiency of 20%. From this work, he coined the term “eugenics,” meaning “well born,” and theorized that humanity could be improved by encouraging the fittest members of society to have more children.Galton’s ideas soon gained popularity both at home and abroad. In the United States, the eugenics movement hit its stride in the early 1900s, when increased interest in the genetics of animal breeding coincided with rediscovery of Mendel’s 1865 work demonstrating the inheritance patterns of certain characteristics in pea plants. Charles Davenport, a chicken breeder and agriculturalist, was one of the first American scientists to embrace Mendelian genetics. Through his studies of large families, Davenport uncovered valuable information regarding the inheritance of conditions such as albinism and neurofibromatosis. However, Davenport’s involvement in the eugenics movement would soon overshadow these accomplishments.
Negative Eugenics in the United States
Early geneticists including Davenport were eager to apply Mendel’s principles to the inheritance of human traits, with the intention of improving the quality of the human population by selecting for desirable traits, just as animal breeders would do for their livestock. Thus, in 1910, Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO), which was based at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, New York. According to a circa 1927 publication released by the ERO, the goal of eugenics was “to improve the natural, physical, mental, and temperamental qualities of the human family.” Regrettably, this sentiment manifested itself in a widespread effort to prevent individuals who were considered to be “unfit” from having children. Eugenics researchers believed that by studying large human families in which a certain undesirable trait appeared, they could demonstrate a genetic pattern of inheritance for the trait, and such findings would justify policies aimed at removing the related genes from the population. Unfortunately, such policies often included involuntary sterilization or institutionalization.
Based on the genetic knowledge available in the early 1900s, this approach to changing the human gene pool seemed reasonable. After all, Mendel’s beautiful demonstration of dominant and recessive inheritance in plants allowed for the prediction of phenotype among theoffspring of parents with known genotypes. Moreover, animal breeders had been applying disassortative mating to successfully improve their livestock for centuries. Couldn’t these same principles be applied to improve the human population? Eugenics researchers thought so, and they therefore believed that by carefully controlling human matings, conditions such as mental retardation, psychiatric illnesses, and physical disabilities could be eradicated. Eugenics quickly became an issue of public health that was advocated not only by scientists, but also by physicians and lawmakers. All that was needed were data to verify these assumptions. Such data, however, would never emerge.
read more, **Disclaimer: this is a much more complete history, however, if you would like to put more info or adress a certain topic, feel free to submit suggestions or do your own post! :) I’m a science blog (well, I’m a human, but I have a science blog), I don’t always adress social issues and I don’t go into a lot of areas some other blogs (social justice, history, anthropology etc.) do, any omission is a limitation of my subject interests or out of my own ignorance!
(Source: concentration-lamp)
