Mushroom Lights Up the Night in Brazil: Researcher Finds Bioluminescent Fungus Not Seen Since 1840
ScienceDaily (July 6, 2011) — In 1840, renowned English botanist George Gardner reported a strange sight from the streets of Vila de Natividade in Brazil: A group of boys playing with a glowing object that turned out to be a luminescent mushroom. They called it "flor-de-coco," and showed Gardner where it grew on decaying fronds at the base of a dwarf palm. Gardner sent the mushroom to the Kew Herbarium in England where it was described and named Agaricus gardneri in honor of its discoverer. The species was not seen again until 2009.
"Like all other organisms in which it occurs, bioluminescence in fungi is an oxygen-dependent reaction involving substrates generically termed luciferans, which is catalyzed by one or more of an assortment of unrelated enzymes referred to as luciferases. In fungi, both the luciferans and luciferases involved remain largely unidentified. During the luciferan-luciferase reaction, unstable chemical intermediates are produced. As these intermediates decompose excess energy is released as light emission, causing the tissues in which this reaction occurs to glow or luminesce. Although the older literature reports some fungal species as producing white or blue light, all recent studies and observations indicate that bioluminescent fungi emit a greenish light with a maximum around 520-530 nm."
As a mathematical mainframe to design the volumetric base of Instants of Metamorphosis v.01, we have the Ulam Spiral. The installation will be presented at the ABCIBER 2011 conference and exhibition next November in Florianopolis, Brazil:
Abstract: Stanislaw Ulam’s (1964: 516) most general observation on his famous spiral, that a “property of the visual brain” allows patterns relating to the characteristics of primes to be discovered, may indeed stimulate the mathematical imagination, and inspire further creative attempts at visual pattern recognition in this area, but his spiral (fig.1), like its derivatives, has yet to be successfully interpreted in terms of possible arithmetic principles that can explain the genesis of the known distribution of prime numbers. Of his spiral he says only that it “appears to exhibit a strongly nonrandom appearance” (Stein et al. 1964). A corollary of this somewhat disappointing observation is that Euler’s pessimistic prognosis has yet to be disproved: “Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the mind will never penetrate” (cited by Ivars Peterson in Science News, 5/4/2002). The Encyclopædia Britannica (2004) continues to suggest this consensus is alive and well, referring in an article entitled “Elementary Number Theory” to “the irregularity in the distribution of primes” which “suggests that there is no simple formula for producing all the primes.”
This month we have two invited temporary members who started working with The Double Collective to develop part of their undergrad research project I'm supervising - Erica Monteiro and Flavio Santos. They will be involved in the production of Instants of Metamorphosis v.03 including the managing of the 3D online shared environment, aim in to produce a theoretical reflection about the creative process itself from a metapoint of view (Edgar Morin, 1977).
First of all, they have to learn about the Open Wonderland Platform. Here we have a few tips:
Using Google 3D Warehouse Content in Project Wonderland:
and
Using the Kinect as input for Open Wonderland with the FAAST toolkit:
and one more:
Using an empty module to bootstrap development with Open Wonderland:
Last Monday I was talking with a new friend (Milena Zafir) about the structural similarities between the church and the academy. She suggested me to read "Michel Foucault – from “The Order of Discourse” (Michel Foucault, from “The Order of Discourse” R. Young, ed. Untying the Text (1971). We were in a garden, talking and drinking beer after a frustrating talk of Don Buchla, at the School of Communications and Arts, University of Sao Paulo. I was reading the small book today while traveling form Sao Paulo to Limeira.
In reply to the following FB post by Professor James K Gimzewski:
(JAmes K Gimzewski) If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. 12 June at 11:40
I wrote:
(Clarissa Ribeiro) and when we hard believe we are telling the truth but we are inventing realities? 12 June at 14:57 · Like · 1 person
Venkatram Dattu wrote the following replying to my reply:
(Venkatram Dattu)Rashomon effect ....... 12 June at 21:29 · Like · 1 person
Googling "Rashomon effect", I selected a few references, including the trailer of the film "Rashomon" (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)and an interesting paper of two Harvard University researchers:
The Rashomon Effect: Combining Positivist and Interpretivist Approaches in the Analysis of Contested Events. by WENDY D. ROTH and JAL D. MEHTA Harvard University Abstract: Positivist and interpretivist analytical approaches are frequently believed to be incompatible as research strategies and ways of understanding the world. This article argues that not only may versions of positivism and interpretivism be combined in the analysis of contested events, but this combination can further the goals of both approaches by contributing information that may have been missed by adopting only one perspective. The authors illustrate this using two case studies of lethal school shootings near Paducah, Kentucky, and Jonesboro, Arkansas, and introduce methodological strategies to manage potential biases that may lead to contradictory testimony. However, these same contradictions act as distinct data points from the interpretivist perspective, offering insight into the cultural understandings of a community. The authors develop new forms of triangulation that are tailored to these research goals and illustrate how, just as positivist analysis may be used to aid interpretivism, an interpretive understanding of a community may be necessary to develop causal theories of contested events such as school shootings.
This the video Ralf Flôres posted last week on FB: "Ralf Flôres Clarissa Ribeiro Pra semana das ligações interestaduais, falsários em missões possíveis, banco que rouba, banda dos desafinados, risadas na madrugada, batidas no trânsito, corrida do rodízio, kibe do Jaber..." Friday 10:40
A starting point to the EyeTracking-ChaoticNarratives adventures...
