Turtle research work at Raine Island

I thought I’d share a few photos from my trip to Raine Island in Far North Queensland, Australia. I was there with a group of other scientists looking at a range of things from the birds and turtles, to the effects of climate change on the island and sea level, etc. I was there for the turtle work as a volunteer.

It’s a secluded sand cay about 800m long, and maybe 2km of beach the whole way around and had the bird guano on it mined during the 1800s. It has a tower at one end made from the surrounding phosphate rock on the island, and was made in only 4 months by convicts in 1844, making it the oldest European structure in Australia’s tropics.

Anyway, here are some photos of the turtles, sharks, birds, the tower and all the rest. Enjoy.

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Photos were taken by Me, Gemma, Nathan and Andy.

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This is what I’m talking about!

Galaxy Autumn Lake, Japan. The Milky Way shining bright above Sirakomanoike lake, situated at 2,115m above the sea level, in the Yatsugatake, the Japanese Alps.
Photograph by Masahiro Miyasaka

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Movie reconstructed from human visual cortex

This is some seriously cool neuroscience!

The left clip is a segment of the movie that the subject viewed while in the magnet. The right clip shows the reconstruction of this movie from brain activity measured using fMRI. The reconstruction was obtained using only each subject’s brain activity and a library of 18 million seconds of random YouTube video. (In brief, the algorithm processes each of the 18 million clips through the brain model, and identifies the clips that would have produced brain activity as similar to the measured brain activity as possible. The clips used to fit the model, those used to test the model and those used to reconstruct the stimulus were entirely separate.) Brain activity was sampled every one second, and each one-second section of the viewed movie was reconstructed separately.

For a related video see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMA23JJ1M1o

For more information about this work, please check our lab web site: http://gallantlab.org

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Tool artwork & artist Alex Grey

While we’re on the topic of Tool, as in the previous post, I thought I’d throw up a few of their artwork images. They use a talented artist named Alex Grey to create their album artwork, and the results are always out of this world. I’m sure both parties have dabbled in psychedelic drugs in their time. Well the members of Tool have admitted to, and judging by Grey’s artwork I’d guess he has too… and good on them too if it produces this kind of creativity!

Tool artwork from 10 000 Days

Tool artwork from Lateralus

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Salt flats at Lake Eyre

Here are some beautiful pictures of the salt flats at Lake Eyre in central Australia from this month’s National Geographic.

At first light, predawn colors are reflected and distorted by a rare rain puddle in Australia’s highly saline Lake Eyre.

In this three-hour exposure during a full moon, the two brightest stars in the sky are described as arcing lines. The cracked bed of Lake Eyre, meantime, resembles nothing so much as a lunar landscape.

To see more of photos of Lake Eyre go here.

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I can see your…unlaid eggs!?

A new line of translucent frogs has been bred by a group of Japanese researchers from Hiroshima University. This will now allow scientists to examine the physiology and development of an invertebrate species as it grows without the need for euthanising them for dissection. Animal rights groups are going to be delighted.

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This is what a 17 gigapixel photo looks like

WOW! Imagine having a camera that could take this kinds of photos… First thing I would do is take a photo of Melbourne from the top of the Eureka building, or the moon when it’s full!

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