Craig Venter synthesises new organism

Geneticist Craig Venter has synthesised a new organism by inserting synthetic DNA into a single cell bacterium, which passed on the synthetic DNA when it replicated into more cells.

Below are several videos following the creation of the synthetic organism, and several from before.

Science fiction and learning science

Below is a video on science fiction and students' understanding of science:

Water and Life

According to Lindsay Doermannin an article on cosmosmagazine.com:

The strategy of 'following the water' in the search for extraterrestrial life may need some tweaking, suggests a new study in the journal Astrobiology.

Put simply: there's an awful lot of places where water could exist - either on the surface of the Earth, or deep within it - yet life is largely concentrated in a small sliver of this.

Eriita Jones and Charley Lineweaver of the Australian National University in Canberra have estimated the volume of the Earth where liquid water can exist, and calculated that life inhabits as little as 12% of it.

The movie Gattaca features a main character who wants more than anything to be an astronaut and go on a mission to Jupiter's moon Titan, which may have liquid water below its icy surface. While the likelihood of Titan having life in its liquid water is not central to a movie like Gattaca, having some background knowledge in these sorts of areas can allow their inclusion as an important or not so important feature of a story for cinema and fiction. This both presents opportunities for new story ideas and for authentic details in stories.

Michael Crichton on a scientific, not religious, attitude to the environment

Here is a video of novelist Michael Crichton advocating a scientific rather than an anthropologically religious attitude towards the environment:

Organic compounds in Antarctic space dust

John Matson, in an article on scientificamerican.com, has written about extraterrestrial dust containing prebiotic compounds (compounds which, in the right conditions, could potentially form simple single cell organisms). The following is an excerpt from the article:

A new analysis in the May 7 issue of Science comes from a France-based team working at Antarctica's Concordia base that uncovered well-preserved meteorite samples from beneath the surface. The researchers dug up snow from decades past, which fell before the site had a potentially contaminating human presence. Therein they found so-called micrometeorites—tiny specks just a fraction of a millimeter across that nonetheless carry important clues to the birth and evolution of the solar system.

The appearance of new life forms whether terrestrial, extra-terrestrial or synthesized in a lab, provide possibilities for a range of stories for cinema and fiction. The life forms could be useful, harmful, controlled by a select few, widely dispersed and beyond the control of governments, etc.

Knowledge of the physical universe

Knowing more about the physical universe opens up more options and greater capabilities for people, and for characters in cinema and fiction.

Below are some videos from Carleton University featuring learning facilities and people talking about gaining knowledge of the physical universe.

Batman (in some versions - for example the 1989 Batman movie directed by Tim Burton) is an example of a character who uses scientific knowledge to develop much more advanced capabilities than most people. Of course many characters do not have to have the financial backing to do this on such a grand scale as Batman.

Satellite planets

In an article by Ray Villard on discovery.com, he has dicussed the issue of large moons orbiting planets and whether they should themselves be considered satellite planets. Th following is an excerpt:

The blockbuster science fiction film "Avatar" introduced the public to the idea that a moon could be more than just rocks and craters. The imaginary moon Pandora, orbiting a gas giant planet in the Alpha Centauri system, is a veritable paradise with lush forests and a rich diversity of life. If the film's writer/producer James Cameron had consulted with Pluto researcher Alan Stern he might have even introduced a new term to sci-fi audiences: Satellite Planet.

Although James Cameron did not necessarily introduce "the idea that a moon could be more than just rocks and craters" to many (for example, Return of the Jedi had the forest moon of Endor), Avatar probably did introduce the idea to a lot of younger people. For more on science in the fictional content and the production of Avatar, see the previous Cinema and Fiction post Science and making Avatar.

Setting stories for cinema and fiction away from Earth can bring aspects of human nature to the foreground as people adapt to circumstances that are different to those commonly faced sharing the Earth with billions of people and the myriad impacts of historical developments which go along with that.

Problem solving

The following is a video of a monkey solving a problem shows the set up of the circumstances leading to the problem, efforts to solve the problem and the outcome of those efforts.

Many stories for cinema and fiction are a case of describing such a problem solving scenario.

Spider webs and synthetic polymers

According to an article on biologynews.net, scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and the University of Bayreuth have made a step forward in producing robust synthetic polymers with properties similar to spiderwebs.

The following is an excerpt from the article:

Five times the tensile strength of steel and triple that of the currently best synthetic fibers: Spider silk is a fascinating material. But no one has thus far succeeded in producing the super fibers synthetically. How do spiders form long, highly stable and elastic fibers from the spider silk proteins stored in the silk gland within split seconds? Scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and the University of Bayreuth have now succeeded in unraveling the secret. They present their results in the current issue of the prestigious scientific journal Nature.

Large scale chemical or geological events

Here is video on the Gulf Coast oil spill off the coast of New Orleans on discovery.com.

The video provides material suitable for sparking story ideas of many kinds, relating to large scale chemical or geological events and the ways people could respond to these.

Describing character behaviour

Anatole Fuksas, in this article on ecologyofthenovel.wordpress.com, has written that the work of Cesare Segre, and of James Gibson and Anthony Chemero on embodied ecological perception, is a much better fit for describing character behaviour in novels than alternative methods such as in the work of Erich Auerbach or Mikhail Bachtin (also spelled Bakhtin).

Goal-directed attention

Vidhya Navalpakkam of Caltech, in her latest research on the influence of task on directing attention, has studied how quickly human participants were able to cast their visual attention on target stimuli amidst distracting stimuli by tracking their eye movements. Points were awarded to participants for correctly attending to target stimuli. The experiments were done with various amounts of points awarded for the tasks.

Navalpakkam concluded that participants' performance varied both with the nature of the distractions and with the number of points at stake.

Further details can be found in this article on Nature's The Great Beyond blog.

These sort of experiments can be useful for developing realistic point of view camera movements in cinema and writing some styles of description of characters' behaviour and experiences in written fiction.

Capturing energy from the ocean

In this article on discovery.com, Emily Laut has provided details of the "Deep Green" energy generator which works by capturing energy from deep water tides and currents.

“Deep Green” looks like someone’s flying kites from the sea floor. With its 12-meter (39-foot) wingspan and 100-meter (328-foot) cable tethering it to the ocean floor, all it’s missing is a colorful tail.

Though its wingspan seems big, the kites are small compared to other tidal energy designs. That’s one of the big advantages to Deep Green. The kite’s small size lets its turbine operate at greater depths, where currents are slower, boldly going where no tidal turbine has gone before.

When anchored, Deep Green can be steered into a figure-eight like a sport kite, its turbine capturing tidal energy at ten times the speed of the actual stream velocity, according to Minesto, the Swedish developers of Deep Green. When operational, one Deep Green sea kite is expected to generate 500 kilowatts of power.

These sorts of concepts and projects can provide options for cinema and fiction, from creating a story about people living with these types of power generation in extensive use to working on a "power island" ocean platform or trying to protect or shut down such power generators to protect or undermine security or other implications of capturing that energy.

Here is a video of "Deep Green":



Below are videos of other ocean power generation concepts and projects:

Knowing and utilising properties of things

According to Lucina Melesio Friedman in an article on scidev.net, the nopal (or prickly pear) cactus is a cheap and effective means of purifying water and is being advocated for use in rural areas of Mexico.

Knowing about properties of things and how they can be put to use can provide interesting story possibilities for cinema and fiction, whether for a character taking advantage of a property that is not so well known or writing about a hypothetical future in which a property is more commonly known and utilised.

Here is the abstract of a study on the water purification property of the nopal cactus.

Bald eagle diet and suitable habitats

Below is a video from the Carnegie Institution for Science. It is about a study into the diet of bald eagles and how this could be relevant to decisions about suitable locations to release them into the wild.

Learning, experience and independent thought

In this article on scidev.net, Ouyang Jing has written about a group of retired scientists who have been talking to school children about science and trying to make it interesting for them rather than have them memorise information delivered by their teachers.

An important part of scientific learning is for people to observe things and think about them for themself; not having them memorise statements and formulas.

Differences bewteen independent learning and imposed statements and formulas can provide many storytelling options for cinema and fiction.

Omni focus video camera

Researchers at the University of Toronto have announced a new prototype omni-focus video camera. This digital video camera can detect and focus on numerous depth points in the same shot.

Normally, a narrow angle lens, a split-lens, or post-production effects would be used to increase focal depth or achieve the impression of multiple depth points in focus.

More details can be found on the University of Toronto website or on physorg.com.

Robonaut

Dauna Coulter, in this article on cosmosmagazine.com, has provided details of the NASA R2 humanoid robot that will be joining astronauts on the International Space Station. According to the article:

"Our goal is for R2 to perform routine maintenance tasks, freeing up the station crew for more important work," explains Ron Diftler, Robonaut Project Manager at Johnson Space Center. "Here's a robot that can see the objects it's going after, feel the environment, and adjust to it as needed. That's pretty human. It opens up endless possibilities!"

The following video features the robot:

Scientific "irreverance"

R.A. Mashelkar, a Fellow at India's National Chemical Laboratory, has called for more "irreverance" among Indian scientists in order to generate original ideas. His article on sciencemag.org begins with the following paragraph:

Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman believed that creative pursuit in science requires irreverence. Sadly, this spirit is missing from Indian science today. As other nations pursue more innovative approaches to solving problems, India must free itself from a traditional attitude that condemns irreverence, so that it too can address local and global challenges and nurture future leaders in science. But how can the spirit of adventurism come to Indian science?

Mashalkar has cited adherance to traditions, text-book centred rather than student centred teaching, and bureacratic barriers as limiting the pursuit of original ideas.

Problem solving and storytelling

The video below features capuchin monkeys co-operating to solve the problem of opening a container with food inside and one monkey choosing to share the rewards of their co-operation with the other one.

Many stories are basically a case of a character wanting something, having to overcome a problem (or several) to get what they want, perhaps with the help of another character (or several), getting or not getting what they want and how their circumstances are changed following their attempt to solve the problem.

Unreliable 'experts'

Be careful about what you believe. Don't trust someone because they are 'an expert' or 'well respected.' There will always be other 'experts' and 'well respected' people who disagree with them. Make your own judgments based on your own observations.

David Goodstein's, in his book On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Frontlines of Science from Princeton University Press, has written about some examples of unreliable 'experts' making unfounded or deliberately deceptive scientific claims.

Problems caused by unreliable 'experts,' people who treat them as reliable, and people who observe for themselves and make their own judgments can provide many possibilities for cinema and fiction.

Scientist biographies

H. Thomas Milorn's books The History of Physics and The History of Astronomy and Astrophysics provide coverage of major concepts and hundreds of one-page biographies of people involved in these areas.

Milhorn's books, and others like them, can be useful for developing ideas for characters and stories while learning and developing ideas about how to familiarise people with scientific concepts with stories for cinema and fiction.

They can also be useful for researching historical periods for cinema and fiction set in the past.

Science in the news

This article fom The National Academies is about nuclear security. It is an example of how issues of crucial scientific issues can be behind news headlines.

The National Academies website can be useful for helping to develop story ideas for cinema and fiction which explore scientific issues that people also have some familiarity with through news reports.

Nuclear Fusion

Scientists at a research lab in the US are preparing an attempt to create a nuclear fusion reaction. Whereas nuclear fission in a power plant involves splitting atoms, nuclear fusion as occurs in stars involves fusing atoms together.

If these scientists were to succeed, it could provide a vast source of energy much greater than what can be obtained by burning the Earth's fossil fuels.

According to John Sutter, in this CNN article, "If they're successful, the scientists hope to solve the global energy crisis by harnessing the energy generated by the mini-star."

The ability to harness energy from human-made nuclear fusion reactions can provide a range of options for future scenarios in cinema and fiction.

Hubble 20th anniversary image

The 20th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope has been marked by a new image showing a section of a 3 lightyear high gas plume 7,500 lightyears from Earth in the Carina nebula.

This article on scientificamerican.com has further details.

The image is a made up from a composite of images from numerous sensors which detect different frequencies of light (or electromagnetic radiation - of which part of the spectrum is detected by unassisted human sight as visible light).

Images from Hubble feature in the below video:

Research station settings for cinema and fiction

In this article on wired.com, Andrew Blum has provided profiles of 6 Antarctic research stations; Princess Elisabeth Station (Germany), Concordia Station (France and Italy), Neumayer Station (Germany), Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (USA), Halley Station (UK) and Sanae Station (South Africa).

Scientific research stations can be interesting settings for cinema and fiction with scientific subject matter.

Brain-machine interfaces

This article on independent.co.uk is about a Japanese initiative to develop head-sets with sensors which can detect certain kinds of brain activity, allowing devices to be controlled by brain activity.

According to the article, the Nikkei daily has reported that the Japanese government plans to have mind-machine interface devices, co-developed with a consortium of Japanese companies, available within a decade.

New technology like this can provide a variety of story options for cinema and fiction. For example, a character could learn through familiarity with such devices and how they work that intricate details that the character thought they knew about supposed mechanical processes of the mind and how people relate to one another is just unfounded speculation.

Learning

The following video shows an experiment from the University of Texas in which an adult teaches children and chimpanzees how to open a puzzle box and retrieve food from inside. The catch is the teacher includes superfluous steps into how they teach. In the experiment, the chimpanzees are often better than the children at solving the puzzle box without also imitating the superfluous steps.



If you are inclined to explain why this happened according to some idea of mirror neurons, social learning theory, etc, ask yourself: Why do you think that solves the question of why the children incorporate unnecessary steps into their learning, while the chimps are able to figure out that they are superfluous? Do you think your own learning about how you would explain this has unecessary steps incorporated which might have produced an erroneous conclusion?

Many stories for cinema and fiction prominently feature characters who come to learn something they had formerly been unable to comprehend. Learning about learning can help writers to develop characters, stories and plots while also thinking about what people may be learning about those characters, stories and plots as they experience them.

Nano scale biological imaging

This article on biologynews.net features news about nano scale cantilevers. The term cantilever is usually used in engineering to refer to a structure in which there are overhanging beams. Using cantilevers on a scale small enough to insert into biological cells, nanotechnicians can design each microscopic beam to attract some substances and not others. The increased weight on each beam created by attracting specific substances changes the frequency of a laser beam bounced off it. Using these nano devices and precision lasers, it is possible to detect the presence or absence of substances within an individual cells and parts of cells and to build images on a microscopic scale. According to the article:

...scientists with the Molecular Foundry, a U.S. Department of Energy User Facility located at Berkeley Lab, have developed nano-sized cantilevers whose gentle touch could help discern the workings of living cells and other soft materials in their natural, liquid environment. Used in combination with a revolutionary detection mechanism, this new imaging tool is sensitive enough to investigate soft materials without the limitations present in other cantilevers. [...]
Rather than measuring the cantilever's deflection by bouncing a laser off it, Ashby and Sanii place the nanowire cantilever in the focus of a laser beam and detect the resulting light pattern, pinpointing the nanowire's position with high resolution. The duo say this work provides a launching pad for building a nanowire-based atomic force microscopes that could be used to study biological cells and model cellular components such as vesicles or bilayers. In particular, Ashby and Sanii hope to learn more about integrins, proteins found on the surface of cells that mediate adhesion and are part of signaling pathways linked to cell growth and migration.

An accessible basic description of their use in cancer research can be found at nano.cancer.gov.

New species

According to an article on cosmosmagazine.com, 123 new species have been discovered on Borneo island over the past three years.

New species can provide subject matter for a range of cinema and fiction, from the blood orchid in Anaconda to the giant gorilla in Mighty Joe Young or the extra terrestrials in District 9.

They can be used to inject specific types of scientific subject matter into a story, whether related to biology, psychology across species, immunology (for viruses and disease carrying organisms) and so on.

Cognitive Training

This research paper on nature.com, due to be published in the print version of Nature, is about a study on computerised 'brain training' exercises and whether they produce transferrable skills useful for general cognitive tasks. The researchers concluded, in part, that:

In our view these results provide no evidence to support the widely
held belief that the regular use of computerized brain trainers
improves general cognitive functioning in healthy participants
beyond those tasks that are actually being trained.

Further discussion can be found in this nature.com article.

Scientific discovery and the people involved

This link is to an article on abcnews.go.com about the discovery of the world's deepest known underwater thermal vent.

As indicated in the post Character subtleties in science focused cinema and fiction, there are people involved in carrying out such voyages of discovery and considering the personal aspects of these people's lives can help in developing engaging characters.

Below is a video of a sea shanty performance titled Ballad of a Modern Graduate Student:

Geological events

The eruption of an Icelandic volcano called Eyjafjallajokull and the resultant dust cloud provides an example of how geological events can impact on people's lives, sometimes on a very large scale. Geological events like this can provide subject matter for various kinds of stories for cinema and fiction.

This video from abcnews.go.com features a helicopter fly-over of the site of the eruption, a map indicating the range of the cloud's spread over Europe, and a trip into the 'restricted zone' below the dust cloud.

Here is an article on reuters.com with background details on Eyjafjallajokull.

Below is time-lapse video of the dust cloud coming out of the volcano:

The following video features closer views of the erupting volcano:

Below is a video of a person interacting with the still glowing crust of the lava:

Cinema and Science (CISCI)

The site Cinema and Science, or CISCI for short, is a site that has lots of resources relating film scenes to various areas of science. According to their About Us page:

CISCI combines the two most popular media among youngsters, namely movies and the internet, aiming to stimulate interest in science.

CISCI contains scenes from blockbusters and movies with scientific explanations and descriptions that serve to illustrate scientific concepts analysing their (pseudo)-scientific contents from for example in physics, chemistry, life-sciences and mathematics. The core of the website Cinema und Science (CISCI) consists of downloadable scientific explanations of many movie scenes that are continuously expanding. For some movies you will also find the corresponding video clips as download, for blockbusters because of copyright reasons you need the movie for instance on DVD. In this case we give the time interval that you need for the access of the movie scene. This method is used successfully in many schools.

CISCI provides these new innovative classroom resources for school teachers and their pupils.

Cinema and Science is supported by the European Commission and its Nucleus programme, "a cluster of EU projects funded by the European Commission's Directorate General for Research, as part of the European Science Education Initiative."

Maths and movies

If you did maths in high school and wondered when someone would ever use it in real life, this may provide you with some answers. This article by the American Mathematical Society on physorg.com has details of how maths is used in computer animation for movies.

The greater the animators knowledge of how to approximate physical phenomena in mathematical terms the more realistic their computer animation can be.

This article contains details on the use of maths and science in solving crimes. This has been explored in the TV show Numb3rs.

This article features details on computational modelling of liquids.

Broaden your experience to be more creatively competent

The more you experience and learn by observing for yourself, the more capably you can portray a range of different subject matter for cinema and fiction, and avoid cliched depictions.

Here is a video from discovery.com of a Giant Pacific Octopus and its keeper at an aquarium.

Observing animals can also be a good way to help develop original animal characters for cinema and fiction, as discussed in the post Animal intelligence and character psychology.

Europe Science Education Media website

Here is a link to the Europe Science Education Media website. It offers a range of resources, including videos incorporating computer visualisations to demonstrate scientific ideas.

One such example is this video on human vision and how research using zebra fish could help people to understand eye disorders in humans.

Character subtleties in science focused cinema and fiction

While scientific ventures can be used to provide a grand backdrop for cinema and fiction, the personal touches and intimate details of the characters contribute a lot to how engaging a story will be for an audience.

In this universetoday.com article, Nancy Atkinson has described the tradition of the NASA Kennedy Space Center Launch Control Team enjoying a celebratory feed of beans and cornbread after a successful launch. She even includes the recipe of Norm Carlson, the member of the Launch Control Team who started the tradition when his beans and cornbread were a hit with his co-workers.

Twister is an example of a film that has a grand science-based backdrop but also a heavy emphasis on more subtle character details.

Psychology of fiction and narrative psychology

This article on onfiction.ca focuses on narrative theory of personality and narrative therapy in relation to psychology of fiction.

There are a variety of such approaches out there. One of the biggest pitfalls among narrative approaches to psychology is confusing a story attributed to someone's life or behaviour as being their total identity. Describing someone's life by attributing a story to it does not imply that the person themself is a linguistic construct. Neither does it imply that such a story controls them rather than the other way around. These may seem like things so simple that they're not worth stating but they are very common assumptions among many who consider themself a structuralist/modernist or poststructuralist/postmodernist. Linguistic fundamentalism, under many names, is a cornerstone of much university-based Humanities study.

Science and making Avatar

Science relates to the making of cinema as well as the fictional content. Here are some videos from news.discovery.com on aspects of the science of making the film Avatar:

Technological aspects of making Avatar

Scientific contributions to the fictional content of Avatar

Using bioinformatics data methods to detect video piracy

A new technique based on bioinformatics methods of collecting and matching data is being developed in an attempt to better detect online video piracy, according to an article in MIT's Technology Review.

In this article on wired.com, Jennifer Welsh has discussed some of the characteristics of this technique, which has been likened to 'sequencing the genomes of videos,' and how it compares to other techniques.

Characters using scientific knowledge to solve problems

When things go wrong, often scientists will be sent in to investigate or people have to use whatever scientific knowledge they have to deal with the situation at hand. This can present a range of story possibilities for cinema and fiction.

Scientific knowledge can be used to determine a way forward to solve a problem, such as a ship run aground leaking oil onto a reef, or as a way to determine what happened, as can take place after a mining accident or to rescue people caught up in such an incident.

Science and statistics

When dealing with research that involves statistical analysis, there are many ways people can get it wrong (unintentionally and intentionally). In this article on abcnews.go.com's Technology section, John Allen Paulos has written about the issue of combining data sets that have been claimed to measure something but for which the thing supposedly being measured is defined differently in the production of each set of data. This means that despite the same word being used for what was intended to be measured in both cases, the different sets of data did not measure the same thing (regardless of what words are used to describe both sets of measurements).

As Frederick Williams and Peter Monge have written in Reasoning With Statistics: How to Read Quantitative Research:

Just because a study has used statistics is no guarantee of its worth. In fact statistics can be misused either intentionally or unwittingly, and it is not difficult to locate quantitative studies where ststistics were not really needed at all. On the other hand, statistics can be a powerful tool for description or hypothesis testing. Probably the most valuable general skill individuals can have in statistical methods is the ability to understand the foregoing when reading research articles, books, or reports in their respective specialties. Of course a valuable specific skill is the ability to use statistical methods in your research if you need them.

When dealing with claims based on statistics, if the details are not provided to determine how the data is claimed to have been collected (ie who is being claimed to have observed what and what methods they used to record quantified measurements of selected aspects of these observations) then the claims are no better than opinions unsupported by statistics. If the claims of who observed and recorded what are clear, judgments can be made about the likely reliability or otherwise of the data and the claims based on them, and data (but more importantly, observations underlying the data) can be tested by replicating experiments.

Developments in experimental research

According to an article on esciencenews.com, experiments at the Karolinska Institet in Stockholm, Sweden (also presented in Nature Nanotechnology) have shown that carbon nanotubes can be broken down by myeloperoxidase (MPO), an enzyme found in white blood cells.

This could have implications for medical applications of carbon nanotubes as well as for dealing with potential future industrial accidents involving carbon nanotubes at production facilities.

Keeping up to date with developments in scientific research can help you deliver cutting edge cinema and fiction, but be careful that you get it right if you're going for accuracy in the treatment of science in your cinema and fiction.

New developments in experimental research can also help you with ideas for speculative fiction that goes beyond accurate depiction for the sake of the story. Michael Crichton is an author who has written several books such as Jurassic Park, Congo and Prey that stray into speculative fiction, while also providing a basis from which readers can consider the real science behind the speculative elements. If curious, a reader can then further research that area for themself.

Atlantic Ocean currents: observations, models and film depictions

In a recent article on spacedaily.com, NASA Study Finds Atlantic Conveyor Belt Not Slowing, it is suggested that the major Atlantic Ocean currents are not slowing down as has been popularly reported, but have slightly sped up between 1993 and 2009.

The source of the data is attributed as Josh Willis from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who also had this research published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, using altimeter measurements from ocean-observing satellites and profiling floats.

The idea of major ocean currents slowing has gained a lot of attention in recent years after slowing was predicted according to some climate models.

The film The Day After Tomorrow depicts a scenario in which the main North Atlantic Current slows down to a point where it stops, causing a catastrophic climate disruption, involving a snap freeze across the Northern Hemisphere and giant storms. Responses to the treatment of this issue in the film have been mixed.

The National Geographic article Global Warming May Alter Atlantic Currents, Study Says provides some background on this issue.

Climate related articles can be found at Climate Debate Daily, where the articles are split into two columns: 'Calls to Action' and 'Dissenting Voices'.

Disagreement on science programmes can provide good story conflict

Here is a link to the article Agricultural mega-programmes 'will not attract funding' on scidev.net.

According to the article in the link, the Gates Foundation has reservations over fuzzy expectations of results in programs proposed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Imagine if a disagreement like the one above was between hostile parties, or if an unscrupulous person is willing go to extreme lengths to sway or disrupt a decision or punish opposition to a decision. Such differences between major players in scientific issues can provide conflict for cinema and fiction on an epic and a personal scale. This kind of conflict can provide a grand backdrop to a story focused on a more intimate look at characters caught up in the dispute or its consequences.

A recent real-life example of such a conflict can be found in the article Google: Critics of Vietnam mine face online attack.

This can be a way to provide strong conflict and familiarise an audience with the science and issues forming the basis of the dispute, as well as to a broad range of human behaviour through the characters.

Cinema and high speed photography

This article on wired.com marks the 107th anniversary of the birth of electrical engineer and photographer Harold Edgerton.

According to the article:

Edgerton invented stop-action, high-speed photography, helping push the obscure stroboscope from a laboratory instrument into a household item. He used the technique to make a body of work that’s revered both for its scientific advancement and its aesthetic qualities.

This high speed photography allows us to record and observe phenomena that would normally be beyond useful limits of sense perception, such as a bullet passing through an object.

The article also links to an article on Eadweard Muybridge's work with rapid succession photography.

Variable frame rates provide a range of possibilities for cinema - such as speeding up and slowing down action on the screen, and freezing on a moment of time that spans only a several-thousandth of a second.

Here is a link to an article containing images taken at various speeds, from Muybridge to the 110 attosecond (110 x 10-18) shutter speed used by Ferenc Krausz for subatomic imaging, with an accompanying description for each image.

Below is an example of video taken at 2000 frames per second:

Animal intelligence and character psychology

Animal characters are often portrayed in cinema and fiction as having more human-like qualities than their real-life counterparts. Often they are portrayed according to previous depictions of animal types, such as those in Aesop's Fables (for example, a cunning fox). Sometimes they are exaggerated versions of one or a few key features attributed to types of animals (whether accurately attributed or a continuation of a stereotype), such as the short-term memory of the fish Dory in Finding Nemo.

The following video round-up for New Scientist article Animals With Human Abilities details 6 areas of human ability observed in other animals and provides video coverage for each. These areas are teaching, learning, cooperation, deception, memory, and social learning.

So whether you want to develop more interesting animal characters for cinema or fiction or you just want to see a chimp outperform humans on touchscreen memory tests (below) - although the chimp has had more practice at that type of testing - you may find the videos in the above link interesting viewing.

Film reviews by scientists

Many people try to separate science and art but science is about everything, including movies and what is depicted in them.

Here is a link to the film review page of University of Melbourne's Science Matters blog where you can read some reviews such as geneticists on Avatar and District 9, a chemist on 2012, or a software engineer on Terminator Salvation.

Also, here is a link to Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics where films are discussed according to how physics is depicted in them, including reviews and recommendations.

If you know of any good science-based cinema and/or fiction pages, please share them in the comments for this post or on the Cinema and Fiction Facebook group.