The Ballad of Thaddeus Lowe

Have you ever heard of Thaddeus Lowe? No, I hadn’t but a quick check on Wikipedia verified that he did actually live and everything that you see here actually happened.  It tells the little known story of Lowe - aeronaut, scientist and inventor who came to prominence during the American Civil War when he performed aerial reconnaissance on the Confederate troops on behalf of the Union Army – in a balloon. Unfortunately his endeavors were not too well received and he had to resign in 1863.

This very amusing animated short was written, directed, animated and narrated by Kelly Jones who also wrote the accompanying song which is probably going to be in my head all day now – for which I don’t know whether to thank Ms Jones or invoice her. 

If Lowe’s civil war activities were not widely appreciated then a later invention was.  He conceived the water gas process by which large amounts of hydrogen gas could be manufactured from steam and charcoal – his patents and ice making machines associated with this process made him a millionaire.  Unfortunately he invested unwisely later in life and died without much to his name – financially speaking at least.  We, of course, will always remember him for his services to his country as an aeronaut – not to mention his ballad… “Oh Thaddeus, Thaddeus Lowe… it’s too bad you’re still unknown”.

Pasteurized

When you are a scientist on the verge of a breakthrough then you need isolation, quiet and, above all, no pesky felines arriving on your doorstep without a by your leave.  However, life for this scientist is not ideal by any means and made worse by an unexpected visitor whose arrival will change everything.  Written and directed by Nicolás P. Villarreal, Pasteurized has won a number of awards.  Watch and find out why!

Dark Side of the Earth

Something has gone wrong with the solar system – so badly wrong that it has been kept a secret from the vast majority of people. Yet one scientist is determined that the world learns the truth before it is too late. Written and directed by Aćim Vasić, this is very inventively done – a single stream of consciousness from a desperate man on the run with only seconds to get his message out.

Step Forward

A father and daughter team of scientists attempt to conquer time travel in this very self-contained two minute steampunk short film.  It is directed by Ben Jacobson, written by Martyn Deakin and stars Holly Jacobson and Jon Campling.  It was filmed at the amazing Abbey Pumping Station in Leicester – a perfect setting.  If you have a precocious child who always does something before you give permission, show them this.

Alan Turing to be Given Posthumous Pardon

In 1952 scientist Alan Turing was betrayed by the British government.  The scientist who was instrumental, through his code breaking endeavors, in shortening the Second World War, was arrested for little more than being gay.  Convicted, he was forced to decide between a prison sentence or chemical castration.  He chose the latter but just two years later committed suicide.

Widely respected as one of the fathers, if not the father of modern computing, Turing is finally to be pardoned by the British government.  On Friday it signaled that it will give its support to a bill which would give Turing a pardon in the near future.  Unless amendments are made the bill should have a speedy passage through the House of Commons.

Unfortunately it will not include the other 49,000 men who were convicted and jailed for homosexual activity before it was legalized in the UK in 1967.  Their number includes Oscar Wilde.  However, at least this news means that Turing’s name will finally be cleared.

In order to mark the occasion,  above is a video about Turing’s achievements which was made to celebrate the centenary of Turing's birth last year. Dr James Grime, Enigma Project Officer at Cambridge University's Millennium Mathematics Project explains the code and tells the life story of this remarkable man. It concludes with his death in 1954 – betrayed by the British Government and with only a single escape route – suicide – Turing bit from an apple he had previously laced with cyanide. This tragic end to a brilliant life was thirty years before most of his work would become public; the Official Secrets Act meant his true brilliance was not to be acknowledged until many years after his death.

Today, however, we can lift a glass to this most brilliant of men, celebrate his life and his achievements and perhaps – for a pardon is not an apology - speak softly of our regret for the sins of our fathers.

Rita Levi-Montalcini Dies at 103

April 22 2013 would have seen the one hundred and fourth birthday of a remarkable woman. Born in 1909 and the oldest living recipient of a Nobel award, she worked past her centenary and put her remarkable longevity down to her own discovery – NGF (Nerve Growth Factor).

So astonishing was her vitality beyond her hundredth year that many asked the question – did this woman have the secret of eternal life? On 30 December 2012 Levi-Montalcini departed this world so we know the answer to that particular question - but what times she had seen...and made. Here is a glimpse in to the life of one of the most astonishingly gifted people of her time, Rita Levi-Montalcini

As a Jewish European woman her own life took many dramatic turns in the times of Hitler and Mussolini - and beyond.

It was a life which, if depicted in a movie, would have many people incredulous that the makers would think they could get away with something quite so unbelievable.

The Forevertron of Dr Evermor

Wisconsin may seem an unlikely place for a Victorian inventor from England to take up home, but that is exactly what Dr Evermor did.  You can still see a myriad of his inventions on display in the small town of Sumpter.  By far the largest of his creations, the Forevertron, takes pride of place at the center of this amazing collection. Dr Evermor used his colossal contrivance and disappeared before the turn of the new, twentieth century.

Image Credit Flickr User Queenodesign

Alan Turing - Celebrating the Centenary of a Genius

Today sees the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing – one of the most remarkable human beings of the twentieth century. A mathematical genius, hero of the World War II code breakers of Bletchley Park, and father of modern computing, Turing was a mathematician, cryptographer and pioneer of computer science who possessed one of the greatest brains of the 20th century. His life was one of secret accomplishments shadowed by public misfortune.

He was a bright child - condensing Einstein’s Theory of Relativity for his mum at the age of 15. He received a scholarship at King’s College, Cambridge and it is to that august university that we turn to learn more about Alan Turing’s life. In his twenties he turned his attention to one of the most important mathematical problems of the twentieth century – the Decision Problem. He conceived of a machine which would read symbols on a strip of tape – 0s and 1s and showed that dark areas in mathematics would always pose a barrier to the complete truth. This machine model became one of the cornerstones of computer science. He did this when he was only 22.

He then went on to his code breaking work, for which he is rightly famous. Here, Dr James Grime, Enigma Project Officer at Cambridge University's Millennium Mathematics Project explains the code and tells the life story of this remarkable man born 100 years ago today. It concludes with his death in 1954 – betrayed by the British Government and with only a single escape route – suicide – Turing bit from an apple he had previously laced with cyanide. This tragic end to a brilliant life was thirty years before most of his work would become public; the Official Secrets Act meant his true brilliance was not to be acknowledged until many years after his death.

Today, however, we can lift a glass to this most brilliant of men, celebrate his life and his achievements and perhaps speak softly an apology for the sins of our fathers.

The Remarkable Rita Levi-Montalcini

April 22 will see the one hundred and third birthday of a remarkable woman. Born in 1909 and the oldest living recipient of a Nobel award, she still works every day and puts her remarkable longevity down to her own discovery – NGF (Nerve Growth Factor). So astonishing is her vitality beyond her centenary year that many have asked the question – does this woman have the secret of eternal life?

Not only that, as a Jewish woman her own life took many dramatic turns in the Europe of Hitler and Mussolini.

It is a life which, if depicted in a movie, would have many people incredulous that the makers would think they could get away with something quite so unbelievable.

Image Credit Flickr User Audrey_Sel

Her discoveries almost never happened. Her father, Adamo Levi, believed in the Victorian idea that women were not meant to go in to the professions and as such forbade his daughters to enroll at university. He relented finally when his daughter was twenty and she graduated with a summa cum laude degree in Medicine and Surgery from Turin University in 1936.

This was the same year as the infamous 1936 Berlin Olympics when African-American athlete Jesse Owens thwarted Hitler’s plan to display Aryan superiority to the world. It was a plan in which Levi-Montalcini, as a Jewish-Italian, was later to be caught up. Inspired by the Nazis, the Laws of Race were laid down by Mussolini in 1938. She was effectively barred from her postgraduate academic work in Italy. She worked in Brussels for a time but had to flee Belgium on the eve of the German invasion in 1940.

Returning to Turin, she was forced to conduct her own research and astonishingly managed to build her own research unit in her bedroom. This was where her research in to nerves properly began. Her old tutor from university, Giuseppe Levi, another person in flight from the tidal wave of Nazism flooding Western Europe, joined her shortly after, ironically as her assistant.

Turin was destined to be bombed by Anglo-American forces in 1941 but undeterred, Levi-Montalcini moved to a cottage in the countryside outside of the city and rebuilt her laboratory there – resuming her experiments till the fall of 1943. Her work was interrupted yet again by the German invasion of Italy in 1943 which forced her to flee to Florence. It was there that she lived underground until the end of the war.

When Florence was liberated by the allies she was employed as medical doctor. Assigned to a refugee camp she dealt with the thousands of refugees escaping the still raging war in the north. Levi-Montalcini fought epidemics of disease at this camp, sharing the imminent danger of death from such illnesses as abdominal typhoid with her countless patients.

She resumed her academic position at the University of Turin at the conclusion of the war. Yet like many scientists, the cessation of hostilities in Europe led her to America, to the city of St Louis. The proposal there was a repetition of the experiments she had performed on chick embryos a year earlier.

She accepted the position and the rest is history, both literally and metaphorically. Planning only to stay for the duration of the initial experiments, which was a period of ten months, Levi-Montalcini would remain in the United States until 1977.

In 1986 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for her research in to NGF. Specifically, she studied the amino acids and proteins in cells which enable them to grow. The studies also involved the specialization of these elements of cells. Her vitality today, amazing for a lady of such advanced years, may well be down to NGF.

Every day, Levi-Montalcini, doses herself with eye drops, which is not unusual when people grow older.

However, her eye drops are special. They contain NGF. It emerges that the molecules have a direct impact on brain function. NGF helps neurons to survive for much longer. As neurons in the brain start to be lost during our teenage years, it is thought that the eye drops have helped Doctor Levi-Montalcini to retain her neurons and their related activity much longer than the average person. Present findings indicate that eye NGF application may represent an alternative route to prevent degeneration of NGF-receptive neurons involved in disorders such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons.

Image Credit Wikimedia

As someone who suffered under the far-right regime in Italy in the thirties and forties, if Dr Levi-Montalcini is capable of feeling the joy of revenge (or perhaps schadenfreude) then it came in 2001 when she was made a senator for life in her native country of Italy.

Between 2005 and 2007 (when 98 years old) she played a pivotal role in keeping the center-left government afloat and earned the chagrin of the right-wing opposition.

This time, however, they could not persecute or bomb her.

Doctor Levi-Montalcini, we salute you.


Image Credit - First photograph

Intelligence Test - The Series

Intelligence Test looks like it is turning in to a series well worth watching!  London based independent illustrator, animator and all round graphic design professional Lee Daniels has created a monkey with real attitude here.  No doubt ripped from his happy jungle home his raison d’être now is to make the life of the scientist testing his intelligence an absolute daily nightmare. And well he should!

Here are the other two animations so far in the series.  We will let you know when we get further adventures in the life of this cheeky test monkey!

What is Nano?

We are truly living in the age of nano technology, but would you be able, if asked, to explain what exactly the word nano means?  No, me neither.

This short animated film explains exactly what a nano meter is to a small girl, using a hair on her head as the starting point.  This animation combines excellent production standards with a clear remit of what is explained - and it is done in a way which will leave you wondering why you didn't know that already.

It is created by Zensoft Studios, innovators of digital media experience that educate, inform, and entertain. In their own words: Science Alberta Foundation put us to the test with the challenge to design two short animations that would clearly illustrate the concept of the nano scale and outline the careers that utilize nano materials or develop nano technology.

...and didn't they do a wonderful job!

findkinkypeople.com

My Dad the Evil Genius

What do you do if your Dad is an evil genius determined to take over the world with an army of marauding robots?  Possibly not a question you ask yourself every day but the young boy in this excellent animation by Benjamin Wigmore has to ask himself that every day.  What's more as well as his evil father the poor kid has to confront mass slaughter, the memory of a dead mother and an electrified monkey.

Oh and the robots turn out to be ailurophobic, just to complicate matters even further. Yet, can the love of a young boy for his admittedly megalomaniac father save the day, especially when he might not be the only evil genius on the block?  Watch this ruddy brilliant animated short and find out!  Oh - and there is a great soundtrack provided by the very talented Patrick Ytting (which is an interesting last name if ever there was one).