BioCurious (Sunnyvale, CA We believe that innovations in biology should be accessible, affordable, and open to everyone. We’re building a community biology lab for amateurs, inventors, entrepreneurs, and anyone who wants to experiment with friends. Welcome to BioCurious Visit the BioCurious homepage BioCurious Community Lab Opened in Sunnyvale, CA; Fall 2011! Join the discussion at Google Groups Our successful Kickstarter campaign ( brought together volunteers and other biology enthusiasts eager to create a community lab, and they helped us raise over $35,000. We are a 2500 sq. ft. facility in the heart of Silicon Valley. BioCurious is… a complete working laboratory and technical library for entrepreneurs to cheaply access equipment, materials, and co-working space a training center for biotechniques, with an emphasis on safety a meeting place for citizen scientists, hobbyists, activists, and students become a member
This is What Happens When You Give Thousands of Stickers to Thousands of Kids This December, in a surprisingly simple yet ridiculously amazing installation for the Queensland Gallery of Modern Ar, artist Yayoi Kusama constructed a large domestic environment, painting every wall, chair, table, piano, and household decoration a brilliant white, effectively serving as a giant white canvas. Over the course of two weeks, the museum’s smallest visitors were given thousands upon thousands of colored dot stickers and were invited to collaborate in the transformation of the space, turning the house into a vibrantly mottled explosion of color. How great is this? Given the opportunity my son could probably cover the entire piano alone in about fifteen minutes. The installation, entitled The Obliteration Room, is part of Kusama’s Look Now, See Forever exhibition that runs through March 12. If you liked this you’ll also enjoy Roman Ondak’s Room of Heights and Karina Smigla-Bobinski’s helium-filled kinetic drawing sculpture.
Ask Nature - the Biomimicry Design Portal: biomimetics, architecture, biology, innovation inspired by nature, industrial design - Ask Nature - the Biomimicry Design Portal: biomimetics, architecture, biology, innovation inspired by nature, industrial desi installation | Biomimetic Butterflies I the barbarian group Our goal was to create mechanical creatures which would respond to observers by flapping their wings. Their motion is achieved using a combination of stepper motors, rare earth magnets, some custom circuitry and a Mac Mini driving the whole thing using input from a video camera. The Butterflies’ wings are created using designs which were laser cut into paper. The Butterfly wings are made of laser cut, heavyweight drawing paper. After laser cutting, and some clean-up with an X-Acto knife, the wings are glued to a small piece of cotton to form a simple and delicate hinge. Using lightweight fabric keeps the overall look clean and creates a hinge with much less resistance than a more standard mechanical hinge. The fact that we need to laser cut these designs presents an interesting creative constraint. The wings are articulated by moving a large neodymium magnet oriented so that it has the opposite polarity of the magnets on the wings. The result is a bit creepy.
February 2011 Scenario: 1) Recognition of the “natural” fake of the place (polder developed on the lake) 2) Development of a strategy heterotopic, tentacular, uncertain, organic. 3) Scenarios of confusion between various natures - built natures (facade in hydro-aeroponiques, biodynamic green hairs) and urban, spontaneous, haunted natures, in order to generate a hybrid landscape, non-identifiable. 4) Using the photosynthesis of all green façades to recycle and clean waste water. 5) Introduction of this knotty geometry into indoor morphology of the exhibition rooms. 6) Individual positioning by portable GPS, coupled to an informational PAD. Biomimetic Butterflies Laser cut paper butterflies that flap their wings when you approach. Biomimetic Butterflies was an installation by the barbarian group of butterflies laser cut out of paper. The installation combined laser cutting, the open source programming language Processing, open source Arduino hardware, and a Mac Mini with a webcam. The wing patterns were designed with Processing using algorithmic design techniques. Essentially, the patterns are generated mathematically using random numbers within user-defined constraints. These patterns were then laser cut out of heavy drawing paper, connected in pairs with a fabric hinge, and pinned down after having tiny rare earth magnets attached to them. Controlling the Arduino board is a Mac Mini with a web cam that “watches” the people viewing the installation. Overall, this is an impressive combination of digital manufacturing and open source computing seamlessly integrated with each other and the environment. Via: Flickr
Design Development/ Analysis of Emergent Form A series of digital models were generated to be tested for quantities to be used as input parameters. The condition of the interior space in terms of lighting and thermal comfort was of primal concern during this phase of the design. These conditions can be controlled in the interior through the generated skin. Interior formal elements were chosen from the AnaHYBIOS models to be introduced as final geometry generators. Limitations of the material system were considered while the conditions are set for the mesh relaxation algorithm to produce desirable spatial outcomes. One major limitation of the HYBIOS system is the amount of vertical distance needed to achieve a habitable floor area. Iterations of the initial algorithm were generated to be tested. The third and fourth prototypes were tested for their interior spatial condition, starting by shifting the ground planes of each program to create more differentiation between the parts.
Organicités Piraeus Tower Ouvertures Dans le bâtiment Dior, les ouvertures sont de simples trous découpés dans la façade. Elles sont alignées sur une bande horizontale et une bande verticale. Leurs positions sont définies par les panneaux de construction, tout comme leurs dimensions. Superposition et perspective La façon dont sont crées les ouvertures des vitres / fenêtres ne me semble pas être le détail significatif de ce projet. Ces percements ne permettent pas un rapport entre l’extérieur du bâtiment et l’intérieur, mais créent un rapport visuel entre la première couche de la façade et la couche inférieure.Elles permettent de mêler les motifs propres à chaque couche (analysés dans x2), et de créer un effet de profondeur en trichant sur la perspective. Landmark, intégration, distances C’est l’idée de jouer avec la perspective qui me paraît particulièrement adaptée au projet de Piraeus. Moiré Une façon d’avoir une façade changeant suivant le point de vue est d’utiliser un effet de moiré: Soleil et vues
Mathematical biology. Motivation. Firstly, I should probably answer the question of what mathematical biology actually is. As the name suggests, it is the application of mathematical techniques to biological problems. But why should we want to do such as thing, when experiments can be run? Why would be want to turn the beauty of nature into an ugly equation? Experiments can identify cause and effect relationships. As mentioned above, my main interest is in pattern formation. An important aspect of Turing's is that it suggests many types of animals depend on the exact same mechanism to produce their individual patterns. The patterning systems we use tend to rely on diffusion as the key mechanism. Next week I'll be demonstrating how we model diffusion mathematically. References:
May 2010 Thursday, May 27, 2010 Existence of RNA 'dark matter' in doubt : Nature News "The abundance of transcripts from the genome may have been overestimated. RNA 'dark matter' hinted at by previous studies of mammalian genomes may not exist after all. Tuesday, May 25, 2010 Top 10 New Species - 2010 "A committee of taxonomists and the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University have picked the top 10 new species identified in 2009. Monday, May 24, 2010 swarm intelligence for adaptive routing in telecommunications networks "We identify typical building blocks of swarm intelligence systems and we show how they are used to solve routing problems. Wednesday, May 19, 2010 C Library for Simulated Evolution of Biological Networks ". Bacterial foraging algorithm Labels: bacteria, foraging, quorum sensing Testing the common ancestry of life Molecular robots Comparing genomes to computer operating systems Tuesday, May 18, 2010 Small RNA Makes Its Move Friday, May 14, 2010 DNA robots
Jose's sketchbook - A personal collection of ideas, programming and shiny stuff In the field of Texture Synthesis, I recently discovered the wonders of the Reaction Diffusion System for nature-like patterns synthesis. The RD method consists on a set of equations which iteratively simulate the distribution of a chemical agent (activator) modulated by the presence of another agent called inhibitor. It is believed that such interactions take place in nature to form patterns which can be found in mammals and fish, and the first model, generating spots, was proposed by Turing himself [Turing 52], dating back from 1952!. Reaction Diffusion By playing with the parameters of an RD system, it is possible to simulate a variety of patterns ranging from spots to stripes. The main problem in practice, however, is that Meinhardt’s description consists on 5 equations with several magic constants (which might make sense in chemical terms, but the authors seem to obviate) that lead to a large search space. RD Strip system as appears in |Asai 99|. 'Space' key to reset simulation.