Archive for the Science and Biology category
Van Gogh: the disturbed Physicist
by Khaled on July 12th, 2006
The Post-impressionist dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh, considered among the best painters ever, has a special kind of art that is recognizable from the first glance. Van Gogh has this chaotic touch in his paintings, indicating, may be, what’s going on in his mind. You all probably know this! So why am I talking about him now? what’s new? Well in fact I’ve read yesterday an article about him on Nature.com.
Well it says that Van Gogh was not only a great painter or an outstanding artist but also a genius Physicist! In fact a very recent mathematical analysis of Van Gogh’s paintings revealed that the patterns he was using for storms are painted in a manner that schematizes accurately real turbulences witnessed naturally in air or water swirls. Indeed Van Gogh’s art pieces have a pattern of light and dark that are closely imitating the deep mathematical structures of natural turbulent flows. This is true for many of his creations that he painted when his was suffering mental disturbances and psychotic problems that led to his suicide when he was 37.
Scientists tend to think that this is mainly due to Van Gogh’s psychotic issues that gave him the ability to represent turbulent flow with such big accuracy, as if he was understanding the physics of the phenomenon. Before he was mentally disturbed, Van Gogh was unable to retrace turbelences “correctly”, also whenever he painted under the influence of calming drugs (like Potassium Bromide) he was unable to depict flows the right way, this is obvious in his self-portrait for instance. It is amazing to know that a mentally ill genius Painter was able to represent flows whereas Scientists were unable to do so for centuries.
Digital copies of Van Gogh’s art were analysed and as a result, Kolmogorov scaling was detected. Many other “turbelent” paintings were analysed and Van Gogh seems to be the only artist that was able to detect and rerepresent turbulence flows with such mathematical accuracy and even showing a Kolmogorov scaling. Even Paintings inspired by Van Gogh’s style like The Scream painting by the norwegian painter Edward Munch, another mentally disturbed artist, don’t seem to render turbelence correctly and their light/dark probability distribution doesn’t fit in Kolmogorov’s concept.
Amazing!!
Scientists Identify Intelligence Gene
by Khaled on May 7th, 2006
This is probably the first time we have such a robust evidence suggesting that intelligence, is significantly influenced by genetic factors, Scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, N.Y., and researchers at the Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics in Boston, think quite firmly that they have found a gene that seems to be influenceing intelligence.
It seems that the dysbindin-1 gene is associated to cognitive ability. They previously demonstrated that this gene was associated with schizophrenia, one of the most devastating mental illnesses.
One DNA sequence variation within the dysbindin-1 gene was significantly associated with lower general cognitive ability in carriers of the risk variant compared with non-carriers in two independent groups.
More to come about this for sure…
A pill to beat fear?
by Khaled on March 31st, 2006
So you fear spiders? roches? high places? you are claustrophobic? well this is good news for you. Medical swiss researchers have come up with a new therapy to ease your phobia symptoms. This is not for today but in a near future you will be able to defeat your fears with a small pill! Yes just one pill! Even better, researchers think that it may have permanent effects.
The cure contains a human hormone called cortisol, and that is produced naturally by the organism to subdue the panic responses in times of phobia, anxiety, stress or fear.
The research team leader, Dr. Dominique de Quervain -University of Zurich, Switzerland-, says: “This will never be a daily pill. But it could be used in combination with behavioural therapy.” Cortisol, which has a variety of effects on our body, is already used as a remedy for several chronic conditions. Side effects of daily use include changes in blood pressure and metabolism, and the risk of diabetes. On a long-term basis it could also affect Memory.
