This is a video of Pearl’s relocation Friday. I always enjoy seeing staff, students, volunteers and visitors united in enthusiasm and concern for an individual.
Note what Sid says to Pearl at 0:21. The animals in our care help bring the world to our visitors. Our debt is deeply felt.
Pearl the Octopus moved to the Visitor Center from quarantine today. Here are some photos from the event:
Here’s a great piece by Nina Simon regarding adult participation in interactive experiences. We carry certain cultural assumptions about what adults do in a museum or science center. These assumptions influence our behavior even when they don’t reflect our motivations and interests.
“The common museum knowledge on this issue is that adults are timid, that we have lost some of the wonder, impulsiveness, and active creativity of childhood days. But I don’t think that theory holds up. Major research studies by the NEA and others demonstrate that adults well into their 60s are highly motivated to participate actively with cultural experiences. They’re playing instruments, painting pictures, and cooking gourmet meals in record numbers. They’re going to trivia night. They’re playing video games. It’s possible–likely even–that today’s adults are more motivated by interactive experiences than generations past.”
On a somewhat-related note, we spent some time in the Visitor Center this morning to work on the placement of the wave tanks. Large sheets of butcher paper stood in for the tanks, and I borrowed one of our wheelchairs to get an initial feel for the accessibility of the layout. We should have more pictures of this process soon.
The world still doesn’t have flying cars or human teleporters, so it’s sometimes hard to remember that we are, in fact, living in the future. Here’s a reminder:
Innovega is teaming up with DARPA to develop augmented-reality contact lenses for military use, according to this article by Charles Q. Choi at Scientific American. Innovega plans to release the lenses commercially as early as 2014.
“The new system consists of advanced contact lenses working in conjunction with lightweight eyewear. Normally, the human eye is limited in its ability to focus on objects placed very near it. The contact lenses contain optics that focus images displayed on the eyewear onto the light-sensing retina in the back of the eye, allowing the wearer to see them properly.” [Link in original]
The article quotes Innovega CEO Steve Willey, who claims the resulting display size would be “equivalent to a 240-inch television, viewed at a distance of 10 feet.”
Innovega’s own overview is available here. The system does requires glasses, onto which the actual image is projected. The contact lens is there to focus the image from the lens of the glasses so the user’s eye can comfortably focus on the projected image and the outside world simultaneously. The technology also lends itself to 3D, as it involves a separate image for each eye.
Are we ready to change the way we see the world? Is this something you see being valuable, either for general use or for specific applications? Do you see yourself wearing a system like this in the near future?
Oregon State University’s beloved research vessel, the R/V Wecoma, will be retiring at the end of March. Her replacement, the R/V Oceanus, is already on its way to Newport from Woods Hole. As of this posting, the Oceanus is South of Jamaica on her way to the Panama Canal. You can follow her progress via webcam and location map here. The image refreshes every 10 minutes.
While you’re on the webcam site, you might want to check out the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory webcam. This webcam, refreshed every minute, provides a glimpse into the kind of research we’ll be sharing with the public through our Visitor Center wave tank exhibit.
Some of OSU’s other interesting webcams include the Java II coffee kiosk cam (pixelated for privacy), the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest webcam, the Marys Peak Observatory webcam and, of course, the Hatfield Marine Science Center outdoor webcam.
Ever since I made the switch to Linux, I’ve been rabidly enthusiastic about all things open-source. I know how I feel if given the choice between Firefox and [insert name of other browser here], but this concept would seem to require much deeper consideration.
“The system is hidebound, expensive and elitist, they say. Peer review can take months, journal subscriptions can be prohibitively costly, and a handful of gatekeepers limit the flow of information. It is an ideal system for sharing knowledge, said the quantum physicist Michael Nielsen, only ‘if you’re stuck with 17th-century technology.'”
What do you think the future holds for “open science?” If an active “open science” community makes a thorough effort to ensure methodologically sound and reproducible research, how might the results be different from existing publication standards?